Wednesday, 14 October 2009
While it has seemed that the strategic Turkish-Israeli relations were not seriously harmed by the now-famous Davos incident or Turkey’s condemnations of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the views aired in the Israeli media following the postponement of the joint military exercise, the Anatolian Eagle, have provided an image that relations between the countries have plummeted. In the Jerusalem Post’s op-ed section, Efraim Inbar, the head of the BESA center for strategic studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan who has written extensively on Turkish-Israeli relations, said that Turkey has been dealing with an identity crisis and is slipping into Islamist retrogression. He claimed this was because Turkey has good relations with Iran and has declared that it would not join sanction efforts against Iran, and defended Hamas, a terrorist organization according to Israel and the United States. Another unnamed Israeli official is reported to have said that relations with Turkey have been complicated recently and Israel should be careful not to push Turkey into the hands of Iran.
For the Turkish side, while the Chief of Staff said in its press release that Turkey prefers conducting a series of combat maneuvers without foreign partners and without mentioning a reason, the Turkish foreign ministry stated in its press release “that no political meaning or implication should be deduced from the postponement of the international side of the military exercise.” The government spokesman, Cemil Cicek, has said the decision to postpone the joint military exercise has been taken by the armed forces without any governmental interference whatsoever.
The ostensible crisis, as it has been called, is because Israeli aircraft that were to join the exercise might have been used in the Israeli Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and against Syrian nuclear facilities targeted recently. It is also claimed that the crisis resulted from the fact that Israel has yet to submit the Heron unmanned aerial vehicles that Israel was supposed to give in 2009, in line with the deal signed in 2005. When asked about claims that Turkish-Israeli relations are in the midst of a serious crisis, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that “ if a country, no matter what sect or religion it has, demonstrates good will and acts positively, the Turkish response will be positive; yet, if its actions are negative for the whole Middle East region then Turkish reaction will be accordingly. We have no worries about possible reverberations of our actions in terms of the Israeli Lobby’s counter actions.”
The postponement of the joint exercise has resonated in the Middle East as a cancellation. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said, Turkey ‘cancelled’ the joint military exercise with Israel and Syria supports such acts unless Israel stops its occupation of Arab territories, including the Golan Heights.
Bahadir Dinçer, an expert on the Arab world and Israel at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at USAK said, “This crisis is Israeli media’s crisis. It has been created and still sustained by the Israeli media. It has been true that the Israeli actions in Gaza and the incident at Davos have created hiccups in Israeli-Turkish relations, but Turkish-Israeli relations have experienced such ups and down before and have always overcome those. In other words, such hiccups never cut into Turkish-Israeli relations. Yet, the Israeli media has tried to create and give an image of a crisis in relations and that Turkey has turned its back on the West to lean towards the Islamic world. Related to the first claim about the tensions, when carefully examined, the Israeli media constantly refers to people who claim that there is serious tension between two countries, anonymously. But we know that the Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, and the Defense Minister have tried to calm the artificially created tension down and said that Turkey is Israel’s strategic partner and a very important strategic anchor in the region. In response to these deliberate efforts to create tension between Israel and Turkey, the Turkish Foreign Ministry ‘invited Israeli officials to be reasonable’ but this was directed against the Israeli media not the Israeli government. The other claim is also ungrounded because Turkey has not turned its face towards the Islamic world at the altar of terminating its relations with the West, including Israel. Many people ostensibly view the new Turkish interest in the Middle East as wrong and the Middle East as a region that Turkey needs to stay away from. However, Turkish inclination towards the Middle East, it can even be claimed, has been late, so the new tendency to get involved in the region should be maintained. None the less, I would like to note that the discrepancy between the Turkish government’s explanations and the announcement by the Chief of Staff have been harmful in terms of speaking with one voice on the issue. While the Turkish government says that the decision to annul the joint military exercise has not been a political decision and the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the decision is purely due to technical reasons, the Chief of Staff contradicted the government’s explanation. Turkey needs to present a common stance to counter those simultaneous attempts trying to release the image that there is a duality in Turkey on the issue. What is most important about the issue is that Israel is a country that crises and instability in the region feeds and these days, Turkey is working hard for stability in the region and aims at preventing a crisis in its neighborhood. Not the Israeli government-and I stress that point- but first and foremost, the Israeli media is trying to undermine that by trying to give the image that Turkish-Israeli relations are in a coma.”
