With its ally Haniyeh gone, how will Turkey approach Sinwar-led Hamas?

The election of Hamas’ Gaza Strip leader Yahya Sinwar as new political chief for the armed group took regional and international capitals by surprise, including Turkey. Initial Turkish reaction is that, unlike the other candidates, Sinwar is a hard-liner and too close to Iran, and that might complicate Ankara’s attempts to foster intra-Palestinian unity and its support for Hamas.

Following Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination on Jul. 31 in a suspected Israeli attack in Tehran, speculation mounted as to who might replace him. Ankara seems to have expected Khalid Mashal, who served as the armed Palestinian group’s political head from 1996 until 2017. Other likely candidates in Ankara’s eyes were the militant group’s finance chief, Zaher Jabarin, or Nizar Awadallah, another member of the political bureau from Gaza.

Turkey’s relations with Hamas under Sinwar will hardly undergo a drastic change — at least initially, according to experts. And while Sinwar is unlikely to turn Hamas into a mere instrument of Iranian policy despite his pro-Iran proclivities, his image as a hard-liner and status as the assumed mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks that triggered Israel’s war on Gaza suggest that he is less likely to be as amenable to Turkish counsel as Haniyeh was and Mashal might have been.

Sea change or course correction?