diff --git a/meta-oe/recipes-dbs/leveldb/leveldb_1.23.bb b/meta-oe/recipes-dbs/leveldb/leveldb_1.23.bb
index 9cefc528ae..1ccf115793 100644
--- a/meta-oe/recipes-dbs/leveldb/leveldb_1.23.bb
+++ b/meta-oe/recipes-dbs/leveldb/leveldb_1.23.bb
@@ -18,8 +18,12 @@ PACKAGECONFIG[benchmarks] = "-DLEVELDB_BUILD_BENCHMARKS=ON,-DLEVELDB_BUILD_BENCH
 PACKAGECONFIG[snappy] = ",,snappy"
 PACKAGECONFIG[tcmalloc] = ",,gperftools"
 
+# CMake policy override is only required for (and only affects) the bundled GTest submodule.
+# System GTest can not be used instead, since (among other things) it requires C++14 and the project uses C++11.
 EXTRA_OECMAKE = "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON -DCMAKE_SKIP_RPATH=ON \
-                 -DLEVELDB_BUILD_TESTS=${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'ptest', 'ON', 'OFF', d)}"
+                 -DLEVELDB_BUILD_TESTS=${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'ptest', 'ON', 'OFF', d)} \
+                 -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5 \
+"
 
 do_install:append() {
     install -D -m 0755 ${B}/leveldbutil ${D}${bindir}/leveldbutil