Israel Katz is indignant. Or irritable. Maybe (probably) both.

“This is how a dictator behaves,” Katz seethed on Thursday, in a message posted to his official social media accounts.

He wasn’t talking about Benjamin Netanyahu, although the description would’ve fit. Rather, Katz was fuming at Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who this week suspended all trade with Israel, according to sources who spoke to US media outlets ahead of any official announcement.

Turkey’s strongman isn’t enamored with the situation in Gaza, where his “freedom fighters” and “mujahideen” (Erdogan’s euphemisms for Hamas) are on the ropes, holed up (literally) in Rafah surrounded by a million or so human shields.

Hamas’s October 7 rampage effectively nullified a short-lived restoration of diplomatic ties between Turkey and Israel which, despite a generally cordial rapport, were regularly at odds over Gaza and Palestine more generally.

14 years ago, for example, Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists trying to deliver aid to Gaza in defiance of Israel’s naval blockade. Eight years after that, Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Israel after scores of Palestinians were killed while protesting on the Gaza border. And on and on.

Initially, Erdogan kept his cool following the onset of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, but by the end of October, he was shouting about war crimes at rallies. “We are making preparations,” he told a raucous crowd in Istanbul on October 28. “We will declare Israel as a war criminal.” Israel quickly recalled its diplomats in response.

On Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who met repeatedly with Hamas officials in recent months, said Turkey’s prepared to join South Africa’s war crimes case at the International Court of Justice. According to Bloomberg, Ankara froze trade with Israel less than 24 hours later.

Katz went on to accuse Erdogan of “disregarding the interests of the Turkish people and businessmen, and ignoring international trade agreements.”

Spoiler alert: Erdogan doesn’t care. About any of that. Not about the people (unless there’s an election next week), not about the “businessmen” and especially not about any “international agreements.” This is a man who bought Russian S-400s while insisting (vociferously) that he was also entitled to buy American F-35s.

Be smart: Erdogan’s a ruthlessly shrewd autocrat first and everything else second. His support for the Palestinian cause is genuine, but shouting about Israeli war crimes to a sympathetic domestic audience is an effort to capitalize politically on the crisis. Late last month, he met personally with Ismail Haniyeh in Istanbul.

In 2022, then interim Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid called the resumption of diplomatic relations with Turkey “very important economic news for the citizens of Israel.”