Last month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reelected president of Turkey, a position he has held since 2014. The race was a close one in which no candidate won a majority of the votes, necessitating an unprecedented runoff that delivered the victory to the incumbent. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak explains how Erdogan outmaneuvered his main opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu:

In retrospect, the 2023 elections will be remembered as the most challenging general elections for Erdogan’s political survival. The deteriorating economy, the devaluation of the Turkish lira vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, the high cost of living, and the mishandling of the February 6 earthquake disaster—which claimed more than 50,000 lives—all significantly risked Erdogan’s chances of winning.

Thus, in order not to waste a single vote, Erdogan had no choice but to work on [expanding his multiparty coalition, known as CI]. This act of survival paved the way for the CI to include controversial radical Islamist parties such as the legal wing of the Turkish [branch of the] Hizballah terrorist organization, the Free Cause Party.

In the other camp, seizing all the abovementioned [factors militating against Erdogan] as a historic political opportunity, the secular Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu forcibly rallied the Turkish opposition around his leadership, believing that this time he had a real chance to defeat Erdogan. Despite this assumption, in retrospect the serious dispute and disagreement among the six party leaders around Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy [projected] a very negative, unstable, chaotic, and inefficient image that led the Turkish constituency to fear a potentially unstable future if [his coalition] were to win.

Apart from the lack of charisma perhaps, Kilicdaroglu’s most important vulnerability was his Alevi identity. The Alevi faith is a heterodox Islamic belief system which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. . . . Seeing this element in his identity as a serious obstacle, Kilicdaroglu decided to present himself as Turkey’s Barack Obama—a minority leader who deserves to break through the glass ceiling imposed by the majority. [But] Turkey is not the United States and Kemal Kilicdaroglu is not Barack Obama.

The negotiations that secured the release of Edan Alexander were conducted by the U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Adam Boehler, with reportedly little or no involvement from the Israelis. Amit Segal considers:

Does Edan’s release mean foreign-passport holders receive priority over those only with Israeli passports? He is, after all, is a dual American-Israeli citizen who grew up in New Jersey. While it may not be the intended message, many will likely interpret the deal as such: foreign-passport holders are worth more. In a country where many citizens are already obtaining second passports, encouraging even more to do so is unwise, to say the least.

Another bad look for Israel: Washington is freeing Edan, not Jerusalem. . . .

Then there’s the question of the Qatari jumbo jet. At this point we can only speculate, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that as Hamas is set to release a hostage, Trump is also accepting a super luxury jumbo jet from Qatar worth around $400 million. Are the two connected?

Still, Segal reminds us that in one, crucial way, this deal is superior to those that preceded it:

The fact that Hamas appears to be freeing a hostage for nothing in return is indeed a victory. Don’t forget: in February, in exchange for the bodies of four hostages, Israel released over 600 Palestinian prisoners, not to mention the Palestinian terrorists—many of whom have Jewish blood on their hands—released in other deals during this war.

As serious as the concerns Segal and others have raised are, that last point makes me think that some of the handwringing about the deal by other commentators is exaggerated. The coming IDF offensive—tanks have been massing on the edge of Gaza in recent days—the many weeks during which supplies haven’t entered the Strip, and Israel’s declared plans not to allow Hamas the ability to distribute humanitarian aid cannot but have made the jihadists more pliable.

And the deal was made on a schedule set by Israel, which said that it would embark on a full-bore offensive at the end of the week if the hostages aren’t released. Moreover, in the parameters Hamas has set forth until now, Alexander, a male soldier, would have been among the last of the hostages to be exchanged.

What of the claim that President Trump has achieved what Prime Minister Netanyahu couldn’t? Again, there is some truth here. But it’s worth noting that the Hostages Forum—a group representing most of the hostages’ families, consistently critical of Netanyahu, and supported by a broad swath of Israelis—has since at least January been demanding a deal where all the hostages are freed at once. (This demand is an understandable reaction to the sadistic games Hamas played with the weekly releases earlier this year and in the fall of 2023.) So Trump let them down too.

In fact, Trump previously promised that “all hell would break loose” if all hostages weren’t released. Neither has happened, so I’m not sure if Trump looks all that much stronger than Netanyahu.

My takeaway, though, isn’t a defense or criticism of either leader, but simply a cautionary note: let’s not jump to conclusions quite yet.