He means back when Turkey was a secular nation and not one bent on joining the rest of the 8th Century theocracies determined to wipe Israel off the map.
The lefties lost big time. They doubled down on jew hate and lost when the “peace workers” were exposed.
Their journalists have desperately tried to salvage an anti-Israel story line out of this, I read some Turk papers, they are more objective than Kucinich and them. Here Kucinich tries to salvage “the Jews threaten our troops” line.