https://www.jpost.com/opinion/turkey-speaks-with-a-forked-tongue-towards-israel-and-the-west-655694
Normalization is in the
air. In the past few weeks Turkey’s
president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced not only that he would like to
have better relations with Israel, but that he is working with France on a
roadmap to normalize the bonds between them.
Regretfully, neither
statement can be taken at its face value.
Given what Erdogan has long demonstrated to be his political priorities,
both must be viewed as part of a broader strategy designed to strengthen
Turkey’s standing with the upcoming US president Joe Biden, and to counter
Israel’s growing cooperation with the Arab world and weaken its ties to Greece
and Cyprus.
As for the French initiative, France and Turkey have been at odds, diplomatically speaking, for a long time ‒ even before Erdogan failed to condemn the murderous Islamist attack on France’s satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, back in 2015. Relations were certainly not improved in October 2020, when Charlie Hebdo printed a cartoon on its front cover mocking Erdogan himself, provoking a furious response from Ankara.
France has consistently
opposed Turkey’s aggressive policies. It
strongly condemned Turkey’s 2019 offensive into north-east Syria against the
Syrian Kurds and the seizure of territory, opposed Turkey’s more recent
incursions into Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, and led a push for EU sanctions on
Turkey for illegally exploring for gas and oil in Cyprus’s waters.
On January 7, 2021, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: “Turkey is not categorically against France, but France has been against Turkey categorically since Operation Peace Spring (Turkey’s incursion into Kurdish territory in Syria).”
But he went on to say
that he had had a very constructive phone conversation with his French
counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, “and we agreed that we should work on a
roadmap to normalize relations.”
On the eve of the US
presidency of Joe Biden, Erdogan may well have calculated that it was not in
Turkey’s interest to be in open conflict with a NATO ally, while it would
certainly suit his book to neutralize a persistent opponent within the EU. Whether he would be prepared to moderate his
position on any of the issues to which France objects is debatable.
Erdogan’s tentative
offer to Israel of an olive branch equally lacks conviction.
In recent years Erdogan
has taken every opportunity to hurl insults, condemnations and dire warnings at
Israel. When Israel accused Turkey of
giving passports to a dozen Hamas members in August 2020, Turkey maintained
that Hamas is a legitimate political movement that was elected democratically. It omitted any mention of Hamas’s bloody coup
d’état that forced the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007 and
installed a regime that proceeded to rain thousands of rockets indiscriminately
on civilian Israelis and their families.
Ignoring the fact that Israel found itself in possession of vast tracts of territory in 1967 having defended itself against the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Erdogan consistently accuses Israel of illegally seizing and occupying Palestinian land. He seems unaware of the old saying: “Those in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones.” In 1974 Turkey invaded northern Cyprus, seized nearly 40 percent of the island, and set up the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus ‒ an entity recognized by no international organization and no country other than Turkey itself.
The pipeline agreement
between Greece, Israel and Cyprus is Erdogan’s bugbear. At one time there was talk of an
Israeli-Turkish pipeline to convey LNG to Europe. That fell by the wayside in the course of the
rocky relationship instigated by Erdogan, but he clings to the hope of becoming
a conduit for natural gas to Europe. The maritime deal that Turkey agreed with
Libya’s UN-recognized government in November would see the two countries carve
out a joint Turkish-Libyan EEZ across the Mediterranean. That deal, as well as
Erdogan’s talk of a reconciliation with Israel, aims to disrupt or undermine
Israel’s three-way partnership with Greece and Cyprus.
In an attempt to get on a good footing with the incoming US president, Joe Biden, Erdogan has just appointed Ufuk Ulutas as ambassador to Israel. Strongly supportive of the Palestinian cause, Ulutus has been despatched to Israel to speak peace “with forked tongue”. He will no doubt do his best to counter the genuine normalization under way between Israel and the Arab world ‒ a process that, even now, is beginning to show positive results for all involved.
It was in November 2020
that the journal Al-Monitor reported that developments at home and
abroad were forcing Erdogan to seek new ways to deliver Turkey from its
economic morass and political isolation in the West. He has begun instituting financial and
economic reforms, and has announced that his administration is working on a new
“human rights action plan” in order, as he put it, to be more in step with the
changing circumstances of today’s world.
His normalization overtures may be part of his new strategy, but in the
light of his past actions and present posturings on the world stage, he cannot
be surprised if his motives are viewed by the world at large with suspicion, if
not downright disbelief.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, Sunday 17 January 2021, and in the on-line edition:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/turkey-speaks-with-a-forked-tongue-towards-israel-and-the-west-655694
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/01/15/turkey-talks-with-forked-tongue/
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