For the past thirteen years relations between Turkey and Israel have been – to say the least – rancorous. As
self-proclaimed champion of the Sunni Muslim world in general, and the
Palestinian cause in particular, Erdogan has lost no opportunity to castigate,
censure and berate Israel. His ire was
especially roused by Israel’s incursion into Gaza in 2008 in its effort to stop
Hamas firing rockets indiscriminately into the country. It culminated in his venomous attack on
Israel’s then-president, Shimon Peres, at the Davos conference in January
2009. The Mavi Marmara affair in
2010 – categorized by Erdogan as an armed Israeli attack on a humanitarian
convoy, but about which much remains to be explained – soured relations between
Turkey and Israel for six years.
Diplomatic ties were restored only in 2016. Two years later, in 2018, when the US recognized
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved its embassy there from Tel Aviv, Turkey
recalled its ambassador to Israel, and Israel followed suit.
The landmark Abraham Accords were perceived by Turkey as an overwhelmingly
negative development. Erdogan condemned
the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for abandoning the Palestinian cause, and
threatened to suspend diplomatic ties although he never quite got round to
doing so.
Thirteen
years of sour Turco-Israeli relations – and yet trade between the two
nations grew exponentially over the
period, quite regardless of the political dissensions. In 2008 bilateral trade
between Turkey and Israel stood at $3.4bn.
Year-on-year expansion followed, and by 2020 it had doubled to a record
$6.8 bn.
Moreover
the thirteen lean years arose on the foundation of 50 years of friendship,
cooperation and flourishing trade. In
March 1949 Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize the State of
Israel. Cooperation grew between the two nations. Over the years trade and tourism boomed. Before the end of the century the Israel
Air Force was practising manoeuvres in Turkish airspace and Israeli technicians were
modernizing Turkish combat jets. Projects involving collaboration in high-tech
and in water sharing were developed. In May 2005 Turkey’s prime minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan paid an official visit to Israel. In November 2007, four months after being
elected President of Israel, Shimon Peres visited Turkey for three days and
addressed its Grand National Assembly – perhaps the high point in Turco-Israeli
relations. They then unravelled pretty
swiftly.
By the fall of 2020 Turkey’s international
standing was in the doldrums. The US
presidential election was in full swing.
Trump may have turned a blind eye to Erdogan’s anti-Kurd land grab in
northern Syria, but Biden had expressed his sympathy for the Kurds. Even Trump had drawn the line at Turkey, a
member of NATO, acquiring the US’s state-of-the-art multi-purpose F-35
fighter aircraft, while already purchasing the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system designed
specifically to destroy aircraft like the F-35. Trump ejected him from the F-35
programme and imposed sanctions. Biden, long opposed to Erdogan’s power-grabbing
activities in Syria, would certainly not reverse that.
Neither Trump nor Biden
favoured Erdogan’s military interventions in Libya or in the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute, both pretty obviously designed to extend Turkish influence in the
region. Erdogan had also attracted the displeasure of the EU by
continuing to explore for gas in what is internationally recognized as Cypriot
waters. After months of acrimonious exchanges,
in December 2020 the EU actually imposed targeted sanctions on Turkey.
Turkey’s relations with
Egypt had been frozen solid ever since 2013, when Muslim Brotherhood President
Mohamed Morsi was ousted by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Erdogan, a life-long adherent of the
Brotherhood, expelled Egypt’s ambassador, and Sisi reciprocated.
Erdogan and his advisers must have realized
that a reassessment of tactics was called for, if he was to achieve his
strategic objective of extending and stabilizing Turkey’s power base across the
Middle East. Out of what must have been
a root and branch analysis came a plan to address the problem – Turkey would
embark on a charm offensive, involving an apparent “rebooting” of relationships
with one-time enemies, opponents or unfriendly states, including Israel.
On
December 9, 2020, after a gap of two years, Turkey appointed a new ambassador
to Israel, albeit one with a track record of anti-Israel sentiment. Then in a press conference on Christmas Day,
December 25, Erdogan declared that Turkey’s intelligence relations with Israel
had “not stopped; they continue”, and that “our heart desires that we
can move our relations with them to a better point.”
Israel
treated the developments warily. The media reported that at a meeting held on
December 30, Israel’s then-foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi decided to
send “quiet feelers” to Ankara to assess how much weight to attach to them. It is difficult also to determine whether
there is any truth in media rumours that the Turkish intelligence service had
been holding secret talks with Israeli officials about normalizing relations.
Then came the
Erdogan-Herzog phone conversation. It
occurred, commented the Atlantic Council, against a backdrop of a
notable decrease in Turkey of the anti-Israel rhetoric usually spouted by the
state’s elites, feeding conspiracy theories and antisemitism. Additionally, the Atlantic Council has noted
the recent appearance of many news articles supporting the need for reconciliation.
“These are important signs,” it comments, “that create a positive atmosphere,
similar to the one that existed around the time of the 2016 normalization deal”
[following the Mavi Marmara affair].
Official accounts of the
presidential conversation report the leaders agreeing on the importance of ties
between Israel and Turkey, and the great potential for cooperation in many
fields, in particular energy, tourism and technology. They agreed also to maintain contact and
ongoing dialogue despite differences of opinion, “with the goal of making
positive steps toward a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which
will also contribute to the improvement of Israeli-Turkish relations.”
Is this the renewal of a beautiful Turco-Israeli friendship, or an astute move by Erdogan to further his political ambitions? It could be both. To reap the potential benefits and sidestep the potential hazards, Israel will need to proceed with caution.
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