Turkey’s Israel Trade Halt Never Reached the Water

Turkey’s trade ministry still books zero commerce with Israel since May 2, 2024, while Israeli import data logged $924.1 million of Turkish goods in 2025. Azerbaijani crude leaving the Ceyhan terminal rose the same year to a three-year high.

Turkish customs stopped clearing cargo for Israel. Israeli ledgers, Greek ports, and tankers off the Adana coast kept recording pieces of the old trade in other forms.

The Halt Covered Every Product, on Paper

Two-way trade had been $6.8 billion in 2023. The ministry, citing a worsening crisis in Gaza, said on May 2, 2024 that export and import transactions related to Israel had been stopped, covering all products, and that the measures would stay until Israel allowed an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of aid into Gaza.

The full stop followed a narrower round on April 9, when Ankara first blocked 1,019 products in 54 categories, including cement, steel, aluminum, and construction kit. Officials later said trade had already fallen about 30 percent between October 7, 2023 and the May cutoff, a stretch they still treat as private-sector business rather than state trade.

Israel Katz, then Israel’s foreign minister, answered the same day on X and told his ministry to build other supply lines.

This is how a dictator behaves, disregarding the interests of the Turkish people and businessmen, and ignoring international trade agreements

Israel Katz, then foreign minister of Israel, on X, May 2, 2024

FROM THE FIRST LIMITS TO THE FULL HALT

1. October 7, 2023: Hamas attacks Israel; the Gaza war begins and Turkish-Israeli politics turn sharply worse.
2. April 9, 2024: Turkey restricts exports of 1,019 products under 54 headings until a ceasefire and a steady aid flow.
3. May 2, 2024: The ministry extends the stop to all exports, imports, and transit.
4. June 7, 2024: Ankara and the Palestinian Authority sign a protocol for tightly checked shipments booked to Palestinian importers and addresses.
5. November 2024: Turkey’s energy ministry says no Ceyhan loadings have Israel as the named destination and that BOTAS does not sell the oil.
6. May 2025: The trade ministry again says direct customs trade has been zero since May 2, 2024 and rejects a $2.8 billion United Nations compilation.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had already said Turkey no longer kept “intense trade” with Israel. The May order was the legal version of that line, written into the customs system.

Israel’s Import Ledgers Never Went to Zero

Turkey’s books and Israel’s books do not measure the same door. Turkish officials count declarations filed at their own customs and free zones. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics counts goods it treats as coming from Turkey, including cargo that left through someone else’s port.

TWO SETS OF TRADE BOOKS

The ministry said the $1.522 billion for the first four months of 2024 included shipments listed for Palestine. After May 2, it says no Israeli customs file exists. In a May 2025 statement it put the point without padding: trade with Israel is zero at customs and in free zones.

Trade transactions with Israel cannot be carried out at customs and in our free zones. Trade with Israel has been zero since May 2, 2024.

Turkish Ministry of Trade, written statement, May 2025

Israel’s bureau still recorded $2.019 billion of goods from Turkey across 2024, a year that mixed four open months with eight months under the ban. For 2025, a full year under the order, it still recorded $924.1 million. Sales the other way did collapse, to $10.9 million from $598.6 million.

A United Nations Comtrade compilation, built from Israel’s own declarations, put Turkish goods at $2.8 billion in 2024 and ranked Turkey fifth among Israel’s suppliers. Ankara called that $2.8 billion figure false. The gap is the story: one state closed a window, the other kept counting origin. Even the Comtrade record of two-way goods still shows a corridor that Turkish customs says it shut.

Dr. Gallia Lindenstrauss, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, told interviewers in May 2025 that the totals differ, but that almost half of Israel’s pre-May 2024 imports from Turkey were still moving through third countries and other parties.

Greek Ports and a Palestine Address

The first leak was paperwork, not a secret fleet of state ships. In May 2024, the month of the full halt, the Turkish Exporters Assembly recorded exports to Greece of $375 million, up 71 percent from $219 million a year earlier. Traders described those boxes moving on to Israel. They favored the short haul and Greece’s ties with Israel, which kept the next leg simple.

A second channel used Palestinian destinations. Assembly figures showed Turkish exports to the Palestinian territories up 423 percent in the first eight months of 2024. The ministry does not treat that flow as Israeli trade. It says the June 7, 2024 protocol created a checked path that requires a Palestinian importer, a Palestinian address, and ministry approval, and that 2024 shipments on that path totaled $797 million, moving through Israeli ports because Palestine has no seaport of its own.

Those two facts can both be true. Goods booked to Ramallah still land at Haifa or Ashdod. Israel’s statistics, which follow origin more than the last stamp, pick some of them up as Turkish.

HOW GOODS STILL MOVE

• Greek ports: May 2024 exports to Greece jumped to $375 million, and traders said the extra load was headed for Israel.
• Palestine protocol: $797 million went out in 2024 under a checked mechanism that still uses Israeli harbors.
• Bills of lading: Cargo listed for Jordan, Egypt, or another neighbor can change hands at the quay before it ever leaves the Israeli port.
• Foreign flags: Later port rules hit Israel-linked and Turkish-flagged ships harder than third-country hulls on the same berths.

Turkey later stopped issuing Eur-Med preference papers that had let Israeli buyers skip duties on Turkish goods, which made the long way around more expensive without making it impossible. In 2025 Ankara also tightened port access for Israel-linked vessels. Direct traffic shrank. It did not read as a wall in origin-based import data.

Ceyhan Still Loads Crude Bound for Ashkelon

The product that most exposes the gap is not steel or cement. It is Azerbaijani crude pumped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line and loaded at Turkey’s Mediterranean terminal. Kpler’s ship-tracking file for 2025 shows Israel taking 94,000 barrels a day of that crude from Ceyhan, up 31 percent from the year before and the highest since 2022.

CEYHAN CRUDE IN 2025

• 94,000 barrels a day: Azerbaijani crude Israel took from Ceyhan, per Kpler.
• 31 percent: The rise from 2024, the year the trade halt began.
• 46.4 percent: Share of Israel’s crude imports, the highest this decade in that file.
• About 28 percent: Russia’s share, still second and well behind the Ceyhan stream.

That flow is the physical leftover of older oil moving through Ceyhan toward Israel, and it grew after the halt rather than shrinking. Analysts at Kpler and Vortexa say ships on the Ceyhan-to-Israel run often switch off trackers and ping other destinations. “The vessel will typically signal offshore Egypt/Cyprus, and will discharge to Israel,” Vortexa said, pointing to the Aframax tanker Valfoglia, which loaded at Ceyhan and discharged 680,000 barrels of Azerbaijani Light in Israel on January 7, 2026.

The Suezmax tanker Kimolos loaded Azerbaijani crude at Ceyhan on December 31, 2025, then went dark on its automatic identification system from January 1 to January 5, 2026. Kpler logged it discharging at Ashkelon on January 4. Israel’s energy ministry does not comment on suppliers. Turkey’s energy ministry, asked about the 2025 lift, pointed back to its 2024 line that state pipeline firm BOTAS is not in the sale.

What the Embargo Cut

The halt did bite, just not where the May statement sounded. Israeli sales into Turkey nearly vanished. The Central Bureau of Statistics put 2025 exports at $10.9 million, down from $598.6 million in 2024. In the first half of 2025 those sales were $5.3 million, down from $581 million a year earlier.

Some Israeli plants in Turkey folded under that freeze. Sanitaryware firm Hamat shut its Izmir unit, MCP, in June 2026 after it could not market the line at home or abroad. Irrigation company Netafim, drugmaker Teva, and miner ICL still had operations there at that point, a split that matches a trade break that is harsh in one direction and leaky in the other.

Turkish factories lost the easy Israeli order book even when some of their goods still arrived by the long road. In the first half of 2025, Israeli imports of base metals from Turkey fell 77 percent, to $90 million from $386 million. Cement, steel, and construction kit had been the April 9 target list, and those headings show up as the deepest cuts. Electrical goods, plastics, and stone still appear in origin-based tallies, which is why a year of “zero” on one side can sit beside $924.1 million on the other.

BOTAS Does Not Pick the Buyer

The oil tap is the piece Ankara cannot turn with a customs circular. The BTC line was set up under a 1999 host deal among Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. BOTAS International runs the Turkish stretch. It has no say, the energy ministry says, over who buys the barrels once they reach the Haydar Aliyev terminal at Ceyhan.

In November 2024 the ministry said companies using that terminal had respected Turkey’s decision not to trade with Israel and that no cargo had been loaded with Israel as the destination. Kpler’s 2025 file, and the Valfoglia and Kimolos runs in early 2026, describe a different last mile: tankers leave a Turkish pier, go quiet, and show up at Ashkelon.

That is not the same as Turkey selling oil. The crude is Azerbaijani, moved by traders and Greek-owned tankers among others, under a transit contract written a quarter century before the Gaza war. Cutting it would be a fight with Baku and with the consortium, not a stamp at a Turkish customs booth. The cheaper path is the one Ankara took: close the declaration, leave the pipe, and argue that destination is someone else’s problem.

Calls to “cut the oil” miss that legal wall, and the ministry’s denials miss the water. Both can be recited in the same week because they describe different jobs. Customs officers file forms. Pipeline operators move other people’s crude.

Jordan, Egypt and the Gap Israel Filled

Katz’s May 2024 instruction to find other suppliers did not stay as a talking point. In the first half of 2025, Israel’s two-way trade with Jordan rose to $315 million, up about 48 percent, with Israeli purchases of Jordanian goods up 72 percent. Trade with Egypt in the same half rose 13 percent, to $279 million. Metals, food, and building materials were among the headings that moved.

Those substitutes did not rebuild the old Turkish relationship. They covered parts of it, at a cost, while origin-based Turkish goods kept arriving in smaller volume. Trade Minister Ömer Bolat has said Israel felt the shock in prices and in how fast it could restock. The 2025 Israeli import figure, $924.1 million, is well below the 2023 pace and well above the ministry’s zero.

Bolat has also said the halt stays until a lasting ceasefire and a free aid flow into Gaza. Ministry statements in 2025 and 2026 still put direct customs trade at zero. Israeli statistics for 2025 still show $924.1 million of goods from Turkey, and Kpler still had Ceyhan’s Azeri crude at a three-year high.