Anyone who looked at the flight schedule at the airport exactly a year ago could see that it was probably completely full, but there was something much more noticeable: the number of Turkish companies, including Turkish Airlines, Pegasus, Honor Air and more, which are basically the same thing. This summer the flight schedule is empty compared to last year, and none of these companies appear on it.
The State of Israel is in a war that brings us an aviation blockade, and the Turkish airlines are at the tip of the spear, so that the second largest market share among the companies landing and taking off from Israel - they all stopped their activities at once and show no sign of renewed activity.
Unlike other companies that have already returned in a certain dose and to one or another destination, the question arises as to why a company that is so successful among the Israeli audience, a company that earned hundreds of millions of shekels a year and that flew Israelis everywhere in the world, suddenly drops from 20 flights on a summer day just like a year ago, to zero .
The Turkish story is of course big beyond the field of aviation. Ask the retailers in Israel, who claim that the warehouses of the products manufactured and imported from Turkey are starting to be emptied and the answer comes in the form of a consumer boycott of the Turks on the part of senior ministers.
Ask aviation economists and they will tell you that aviation in the world has become a tool in foreign relations for years, and that Turkey is a good example and a leader in the field. A subsidized government company that prides itself - and rightly so - on the world's top destinations and advanced service and that employs the world's most famous presenters, all at a very competitive price. All of these are part of the central arm of Turkish foreign relations and a way to strengthen in the world.
Israel-Turkey relations have known ups and downs in recent years, the amplitude is opening up and the peaks with it, in the form of the Marmara, renovation of mosques in the areas of East Jerusalem, support for civic education programs in the West Bank and more.
On the other hand, we flew there quite a bit, in close partnership with our colleague in the Turkish Air Force; We renovated weapons and anti-tank weapons, and the defense industries flourished; fruitful trade and industry gave rise to joint enterprises in the fields of glass, cement, food, and more - all under the envelope of close and consistent defense cooperation that exists to this day.
Over the years, the glass factories turned into medical tourism in the form of cosmetic surgery and dentistry, and the cement became privatized and closed the factory in the wet, so that most of the cement until the war really only came from Turkey. Military cooperation has gone down south to Greece, and the tones have become harsher, security cooperation has been maintained and the countries have not moved geographically and neither is going anywhere.
Life is a wheel, also in Canaan and the Ottoman Empire. The independence of a country does not contradict the importance of foreign relations and building coalitions. If the Turkish alliance is not with Israel, it will be with a less friendly country on the less desirable axis for us and the whole world.
Israel needs to produce cement, even if the economic model is not as profitable as high-tech, because it is not possible and should not rely on Turkish cement - and on the other hand invest in a business and security partnership more strongly with the Turks as before.
Turkey is today the logistics center for our region, a productive and developing country, a distribution center for the Middle East and Europe, so its strategic importance is only increasing. This is the reality and these are the cards, now we have to win.
In Niom, Saudi Arabia, the world's most advanced city of the future, a new airline called Air Riyadh is being built. No one has really heard of it yet, but the deal of hundreds of planes signed last year heralds a lasting change in the neighboring kingdom. We will expand further on the aviation matter, but for the Israeli passenger the flight to Naum will be shorter than the familiar flight to Istanbul.
A modern and large Saudi airline is designed to compete with the Gulf airlines, where it is much warmer, for the longer flight and much greater curiosity to the Saudi Kingdom than to the prosperous and advanced Emirates cluster. And it's happening right now.
The way for a country to break into the world is through aviation when you are a big player, and in developed industry when you are a small player. Israel will issue high-tech companies for billions and the Turks will fly the Israelis all over the world, along with the rest of the world. The Singaporeans have realized that it is possible to combine, and it is slowly succeeding, and the Emarats are also trying to market aviation, industry, economy and tourism in a successful model paid for by huge oil money.
In the small and challenged Israel, the aviation potential will not be fully utilized in the coming years because we have not managed to build infrastructures that would allow it to do so. Part of a long-term thinking that has disappeared amid ongoing political chaos - and the last year with persistent fighting on several fronts, even if justified, does not contribute to a healthy aviation promotion.
However, in every crisis there is also an opportunity: to speed up development and planning, to remove barriers as much as possible and to build much more and as quickly as possible infrastructures, including aviation, so that we can maintain an Israeli option for passengers to compete with Riad Air or Emirates. Even if it is not really realistic and even if it is not always the same product for the Israelis.
Nothing in the Middle East stands on its own. Everything is connected to everything: aviation in foreign relations, security and the economy feed each other and the relations between the countries often skip over political disputes because they manage to see the common denominator and the future around the corner, things that are not always visible in the corridors of government, neither in routine nor in war.
But the future will come, and the common denominator is always there. It is usually wider than we are able to see, and if we don't see it in our favor, someone else will - and not necessarily in our favor.
Turkey is close, an hour's flight away, with a warm mentality and similar food that remind us all that we were once attached to the Ottoman Empire. Today we are a small power in our own right, but foreign relations with the Turks are very important for the future when looking at the global threat map and certainly from a regional perspective. A bear hug is an ancient and wise method, and sometimes it is better than childish abuse.
The writer is the chairman of the Israeli Pilots Association