Turkey and Israel a saga of (former) regional allies by Sylvia T. Turkey and Israel: two traditional regional allies. Two countries with different backgrounds but also with many similarities that led to a long association with each other. Two business partners whose bilateral trade volume increased under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government by 145 percent and reached $4 billion. Is the saga of a relatively happy coexistence of the only two functional democracies with secular political structures in the region over? Can this already very strained relationship survive after the Israeli raid on the Free Gaza Movement’s flotilla of six ships that led to the killing of Turkish citizens by Israeli naval commandos? How has it happened that by expressing its willingness to mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Turkey became a sort of party to the conflict? How far can Israel go with its far-fetched assertiveness?
These and others are the questions that puzzle many minds. Turkey-Israel relations in retrospect A total breakdown? *Dr. Erdogan to Obama: Israel risks losing its best friend in Middle. After the Israeli flotilla incident, Turkey is the new Palestini. Blaming Turkey. Last year, Lauren Rosenberg was walking across a four-lane highway in Utah when she was hit by a car. Now she’s suing Google for $100,000 in damages because Google Maps told her to take that route. The lawsuit is patently absurd. If she had come to an edge of a cliff that Google Maps said was the shore of a lake, would she have dived in?
Honestly, people will do anything to avoid the difficult task of taking responsibility for their own actions. As with people, so with countries. I was astonished to read an editorial in The Washington Post this weekend about the Israeli commando raid on the humanitarian flotilla heading to Gaza. Entitled “Turkey’s Responsibility,” the editorial was full of inaccurate statements. Turkey and Israel have actually had a long alliance that has continued into the Erdogan era. Also, The Post scandalously suggests that the victims of the flotilla attack were somehow guilty and perhaps even deserving of what they got. Name and Blame. Ankara neither needs nor wants Israel.
Why has the alliance between Turkey and Israel fallen apart? The answer is simple: a Turkish regime that is Islamist neither needs nor wants the continuation of such a relationship. This has been obvious to Israeli analysts for several years despite the fact that the world has only recently realized the situation. The alliance was based on three fundamental strategic interests, though the two sides also received three other benefits from the relationship. Let us begin with the interests. First, the pre-Islamist Turkish governments and armed forces saw the greatest threats as being revolutionary Islamism (for example, Hamas and Hizballah) and, in particular, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
This has all changed. Another foundation for the alliance was the attitude of the Turkish armed forces. This has all changed. The third basis of the relationship was that Israel furnished Turkey with an asset in its dealings with the United States. This has all changed. Israel was a valuable trading partner. A new strategic divide in the region. In the past, I have argued in these virtual pages that problems between Turkey and Israel should not be considered as one-off events. There are structural reasons for tensions to flare up.
Therefore I concluded that there would be ever more conflicts between the two allies/partners. Even with that prognosis, I could not have imagined that the episode of the aid convoy to Gaza would end up with the calamitous, illegal, ill-thought-out, ill-fated and bloody attack against the ship Mavi Marmara by Israeli commandos. In my view, neither the personalities nor the ideological affiliations of some of the people who were on that ship, nor their resistance to the attack, can be offered as just causes for the bloody carnage that followed. This debate will continue for a long time and perhaps inconclusively. In the past, I identified two main reasons why relations were likely to suffer more crises in the future. Related to these facts is the second structural reason. No short-term fix to relations. Turkish-Israeli relations are in a state of coma.
Will it be possible to resuscitate? The answer is, no, not any time soon, or maybe even later, unless extraordinary developments take place that reverse the current course of events. Neither side seems to be willing to back down, even an inch, from their current positions. Moreover, these positions are getting ever more deeply entrenched due to the incessant crossfire of words from the highest posts in the administrations of both countries. How far can this go? The root causes of the current situation lie far deeper than most people think. Turkey and Israel enjoyed an almost perfect relationship throughout the 1990s, one that amazed their friends and bothered their rivals.
Turks and Jews have a long and much cherished history of peaceful relations spanning over five centuries since the Ottoman Empire first embraced Jews who were persecuted in Spain in the 15th century. No longer an ally. There are three ways to view the deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations. They are complementary and, taken together, should guide Israeli policy-makers in deciding how to proceed in dealing with Ankara. The most prevalent view in Israel but possibly in some western and moderate Arab countries as well, is that PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Islamist AKP are steadily leading Turkey on a path toward extremism.
They are linking Ankara to the most radical countries and movements in the Middle East, from Iran and Syria to Hamas and Hizballah. Further, Erdogan seeks to usurp the role of more moderate countries and governments in dealing with Islamist extremists: to replace Egypt in mediating the needs of Hamas; and along with Brazil, to displace the United States in making deals with Iran. Erdogan's rhetoric against Israel, often in the name of Turkish honor, has become inflammatory and at times anti-Semitic. All of this seemingly culminated in the recent flotilla incident. Israel and Turkey, post-flotilla. The Israeli attack on the Turkish-flagged "Freedom Flotilla" that aimed to break the siege and blockade on the Gaza Strip is threatening the once strategic relationship between Israel and Turkey. Turkey considers the incident an attack on its sovereignty and has warned that relations with Israel will never be the same. Turkey was the first Islamic country to recognize Israel in March 1949.
Over the past 60 years, the two countries developed a very strong relationship. Israel has been a major supplier of arms to Turkey. Military, strategic and diplomatic cooperation between Turkey and Israel were accorded high priority by the governments of both countries, which share concerns with respect to the instabilities in the Middle East. But diplomatic relations between the two countries were strained after Israel launched a war on the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009 that took the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians.
Can Turkey terminate its relations with Israel? La stratégie du bunker d'Israël face à son isolement internation.