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Devlet Bahceli, leader of Türkiye’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a key ally in the ruling People’s Alliance, said Tuesday that any regime change in the Middle East should begin with Israel, which he described as the primary source of instability in the region.
Speaking to his parliamentary group, Bahceli asserted that if the international community seeks to restructure the region with regime changes, it must start with the government in Tel Aviv.
Bahceli stated, "Israel is turning the region into hell. It is a necessity for Trump to limit Netanyahu and Israel."
Bahceli framed current regional tensions as a modern revival of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the 1916 pact that partitioned Ottoman territories. He accused imperialist powers of using ethnic and religious divisions to destabilize sovereign nations for economic and technological dominance.
"The actors and tools may change, but the parties and ambitions remain the same," Bahceli said, adding that "barbarism" and "imperialist desires" are being used to redraw regional maps at the expense of "oppressed peoples."
Earlier this month, Bahceli had strongly reacted to U.S. President Donald Trump's call for Kurds in Iran to take up arms against the Tehran regime.
"Kurds will not and should not act as mercenaries for any axis that tests the waters to drive our Kurdish brothers onto the battlefield, planning to collapse Iran from the inside," he stated. "My Kurdish brothers are not for sale or for rent," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told senior U.S. officials that any future agreement between Washington and Tehran would not stop Israel’s war in Lebanon, according to a report Monday.
The Israel Hayom daily said Netanyahu conveyed the message during recent closed-door talks with senior officials in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
According to the newspaper, Netanyahu said any agreement reached between the United States and Iran would not apply to the Lebanese front.
“Israel will continue to take advantage of the opportunity to eliminate Hezbollah even if there is an agreement between Trump and Iranian officials,” the report said.
The newspaper also said Netanyahu rejected a French proposal to halt the war against Hezbollah in exchange for French President Emmanuel Macron’s commitment to help resolve the situation.
According to the report, Netanyahu believes Israel now has an opportunity to significantly improve its security situation by pushing Hezbollah beyond the Litani River.
A senior Israeli official quoted by the newspaper said the United States had accepted Israel’s position.
“Lebanon does not matter to President Trump,” the official said.
Israel has pounded Lebanon with airstrikes and launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon since a cross-border attack by Hezbollah on March 2.
Lebanese authorities said at least 1,247 people have since been killed and 3,690 injured in Israeli attacks.
The escalation came amid a joint US-Israeli offensive on Iran, which has killed more than 1,340 people since Feb. 28. Iran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel and US bases in Gulf countries.
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