Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has this week endured some fairly caustic and biting critiques from old enemies Israel and Greece. While the former presented the Turkish leader as a toddler in the lap of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the latter mocked Turkey’s “junk” fighter jets as vastly inferior to its own.

Well, when you dish it out the way Erdogan so often does, you can’t have too many complaints when it comes back at you.

First the Israeli episode. Releasing a July 21 social media post (see below) that portrayed an infant Erdogan in the Iranian supreme leader’s lap, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, wrote: “Erdogan @RTErdogan finances and arms terrorist organizations of Hamas to carry out attacks and murder against Israelis. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) captured a squad of students from Bir Zeit [University] who were employed by the Hamas headquarters in Turkey to carry out murder attacks in Israel, through training and weapons and tens of thousands of dollars provided to them.

“Erdogan turned Turkey into a state that supports terrorism and subjects Turkey to the Iranian axis of evil in the name of extreme ideology and blatant antisemitism.”

Turkey’s foreign affairs ministry quickly posted an angry rebuttal, saying: “Israel's dirty propaganda targeting Türkiye and President Erdogan, and psychological operation attempts will not bear fruit.

“The members of the Netanyahu Government, who have killed nearly forty thousand Palestinians in Gaza and are now trying to start a regional war in order to stay in power, will be tried in international courts and held accountable for their crimes. Türkiye will continue to speak the truth and defend the right of the Palestinian people to live in justice and peace.”

The harsh exchange with Greece, meanwhile, appeared to have been sparked by the political need for both Ankara and Athens to play the tough guy with each other last week, a week that featured the 50th anniversary of the Turkish invasion that split Cyprus into the Turkish Cypriot north and Greek Cypriot south.

Provocative comments made on Greek television by Greece’s health minister Adonis Georgiadis included a remark that his country’s F-35 fighter jets could strike Turkey “suddenly one night”.

Greek officials taunt Turkey over its inability to get its hands on the world's most advanced fighter jet, the F-35 (Credit: MSgt John Nimmo S, US Air Force, public domain).

The F-35 is a sore point with Turkey. Ankara is banned by the US from acquiring the aircraft—the world’s most advanced fighter jet—due to the decision of Turkey, like Greece a Nato member, to defy Washington's wishes by acquiring S-400 advanced missile defence systems from the Kremlin.

“With F-35s, we can go to Turkey one night. One night, you will suddenly find them in Ankara,” Georgiadis said, referencing previous threats made by Erdogan.

In a further incitement to the Erdogan regime, Georgiadis then questioned Turkey’s aviation capabilities, calling the Turkish military’s aircraft outdated. “With what will you come to Greece one night? With the junk you have? Everyone knows Turkey is zero in aviation,” he added.

For his part, Erdogan on July 21 warned that Turkey stood ready to build a naval base in Northern Cyprus.

“If necessary, we can construct a base and naval structures in the north,” Turkey’s official news service Anadolu Agency quoted him as saying, while also accusing Greece of wanting to establish a naval base of its own in Cyprus.