written by Mustafa Yetim printable version send your friend

Friday, 23 September 2011

When the AKP came to power in 2002, the “litmus test” for the ruling party was how well it could keep Turkey’s economic, politic and military relations with Israel positive as in the past, since the AKP was considered to have Islamic roots. Some foreign and local politicians and commentatorsfurther claimed that the relations between Turkey and Israel would deteriorate in time in terms of economic, military, and political ties. These presumptions did not materialize; on the contrary, both countries improved their relations in many aspects, especially considering the military equipment transferred from Israel with the aim of fighting against PKK terrorism.As a result of expanding relations, paying a historical visit to Israel in 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared anti-Semitism a crime against humanity and also underscored the importance of relations between the two countries. After a while, being the first Israeli President to address the Turkish Grand National Assembly, Shimon Peres stressed the strong ties between both countries and Turkey’s crucial mediating role in the Palestinian Question during his official visit in 2008. The bilateral ties seemed to be strong between these countries, but reality was rather different.

To put it another way, fortifying soft power means solving regional problems. Turkey’s new perspective toward the Middle East region, formulated by Ahmet Davutoðlu, the current Foreign Affairs Minister and former foreign policy advisor of the Prime Minister, has started to differ sharply from Israel’s policy of focusing on the use of hard power means in regional conflicts. This significant difference was no longer tolerated by Ankara after Israel entered its forces into the Gaza Strip in December 2008, which coincided with the end of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s visit to Turkey. During Olmert’s visit, both sides strongly emphasized their belief that regional questions could only be solved with dialogue, however, Turkey would later be shocked at Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in Gaza, stressing that “killing innocent people is a crime against humanity.”It was inevitable that this act, which was perceived as arrogance or mistrust by Turkey, would trigger deterioration in the relationship between the two countries. Subsequently, the period of the crisis including Davos, the low seat incident, and lastly the flotilla crisis has continued between the two countries ever since. Especially after the flotilla crisis, in which Israeli soldiers killed nine Turkish citizens during the deadly military raid on the vessel aiming to bring humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, Turkey stipulated a state apology from Israel and compensation for the nine Turks in order to mend the fences between the two countries.

Immediately afterwards, political relations came to a halt, and reciprocal harsh criticism replaced the mutual understandingbetween the two countries. To make matters worse, the conflict has increasingly intensified with Israel’s refusal to meet the demands of Turkey for the normalization of bilateral ties. Therefore, Turkey brought the flotilla case to the international agenda and accused Israel of behaving like “an irresponsible state.” During thisperiod, there were some reciprocal efforts to mend their relations. However, none of the efforts were successful since Israel has maintained its stance toward Turkey’s demands. That means Israel will never apologize for the nine Turks, and it instead proposed to express “regret.” These developments made relations more complicated. After a while, Turkey’s patience ended and Ankara finally announced a range of diplomatic sanctions against Israel. Those sanctions comprised of five items as follows: downgrading diplomatic relations, cancelling all military agreements, escorting Turkish aid convoys with Turkish warships, intensifying the efforts to lift the embargo on Gaza, and extending full support to the families of the Mavi Marmara victims in their pursuit of justice from Israel.

These measures coincided with the leak of information on the long-awaited UN report with regard to the flotilla crisis, in which it found Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza legal and fair whiledeeming the Israeli interference an “unreasonable killing” of civilians. Accepting the report “null and void,” Ankara strongly underscored that it would take further steps in the areas of political and military relations, but not trade. That is to say, Ankara seems to maintain economic relations with Tel-Aviv as before, in an attempt to leave the door for a probable normalization of bilateral relations open and to prevent its economy from worsening. For now, neither side is changing their stance toward the case nor are they taking steps to repair their relations. However, warning the government not to lose Turkey, prominent figures of the Labor Party, the coalition partner of the current administration, offered harsh criticism toward the government regarding the deteriorating relations with Turkey. For instance,Defence Minister (and former Prime Minister) Ehud Barak said that Israel might face isolation ahead of a cabinet meeting on Monday in which tensions with Turkey and Egypt were discussed. In addition, having failed to prevent the problem with Turkey from turning into a deep crisis, the Netanyahu administration won’t be able to take the necessary steps to mend bilateral ties. As a final analysis, bilateral ties between the two countries do not seem as though they will be mended in the near future. However, whether this fragmentation between the two former allies will continue remains an open question.