Full restoration of the Israel-Turkey strategic ties of old has a long way to go.
By ALON LIELThe Turkish ship Mavi Marmara leaves Istanbul May 22, 2010, aiming to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza(photo credit: REUTERS)
RECENT TALK of an imminent breakthrough in Israel-Turkey relations seems premature.The parties still have major obstacles to overcome.Twice in the last decade lightning has struck the relationship with devastating effect. In both cases Gaza was at the center of the storm.In December 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against the Hamas regime, and in May 2010, Israel Navy commandos seized control of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-run vessel planning to breach Israel’s maritime blockade.Both incidents touched raw Turkish nerves. Cast Lead significantly undermined Hamas, an ideological ally of Turkey’s; and in the seizure of the Mavi Marmara nine Turkish nationals were killed and another died later of his wounds, most of them activists in IHH, the Islamist organization behind the Mavi Marmara-led flotilla. To make matters worse, at the time IHH was very close to the Turkish regime.Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reacted immediately in both cases with a stream of abusive anti-Israel rhetoric, sparking an acute crisis. At its height, the ambassadors in both Ankara and Tel Aviv were “recalled for consultations.” They have yet to return.The crisis continued with Turkey adamant in its demand for an Israeli apology for the Mavi Marmara affair and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu steadfastly refusing to offer one. It was only during US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel in March 2013 that Netanyahu, under intense American pressure, apologized to Erdoğan over the phone. That conversation finally put the two parties on course toward resolving the crisis.But the reconciliation talks made little headway. Much of the focus was on the amount of compensation Israel should pay the families of the Mavi Marmara casualties. But as understandings on this were taking shape, other differences, which have so far proved unbridgeable, started piling up.For its part, Israel has been able to fill the vacuum created by Turkey’s seven-year absence with considerable success. It turned primarily to the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where its overtures to Greece, Cyprus, Rumania, Bulgaria and others paid handsome diplomatic, security, intelligence and energy dividends.
This burgeoning relationship is important for Israel not only as a counterweight to Turkey’s absence, but also in the wider European- Israel context, where tensions with the western part of the continent have been exacerbated over European support for the establishment of a Palestinian state and sharp criticism of Israel’s continued building in the settlements.Closer to home, the strains with Turkey helped strengthen Israel’s ties with Egypt.After the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in the summer of 2014, Egypt, rather than Turkey, emerged as the mediator between Israel and Hamas. Although indirect talks with Hamas in Cairo failed to make progress, military and intelligence ties between Israel and Egypt were significantly enhanced, especially around their common interest in blocking Islamist radicalization in Gaza and northern Sinai, and in preventing Turkish meddling in Gazan affairs.Now Moscow has also entered the frame. This too has had some positive spin-offs for Israel. The Russian military presence in Syria necessitated close coordination with the Israeli military, which led to unprecedentedly fruitful cooperation. On the other hand, Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter plane in late November created an acute crisis between Moscow and Ankara. And this, in turn, sparked Russian opposition to an Israel-Turkey reconciliation.Besides all these problematic undercurrents, Israel and Turkey also clashed openly. Israel demanded the closure of the Hamas offices in Istanbul on the grounds that they were implicated in West Bank terror attacks; Turkey insisted (albeit not so loudly recently) on the lifting of the naval blockade on Gaza and allowing it to provide humanitarian aid, electricity and an outlet to the sea.In mid-April, under the weight of the unsolved problems above and below the surface, a new idea emerged: exchanging ambassadors before all the outstanding issues are resolved.What this shows is that full restoration of Israel-Turkey relations to something even approaching the strategic ties of old has a long way to go. Dr. Alon Liel, a former director general of the Foreign Ministry, was chargé d’affaires in Turkey in the 1980s and is the author of ‘Demo-Islam – Islamic Democracy in Turkey’