Israel: Turkey insincere about mending fences
Several emissaries are trying to reconcile Turkey and Israel, but the latter feels that resetting relations requires a sincere change of approach: an end to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's declarations against Israel and to his support for Hamas terror.
“Turkey has to solve the problem of Saleh al-Arouri [a Hamas leader exiled from the West Bank who lives in Turkey]. It is unthinkable that a NATO member should allow terror acts from its territory.” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said this in a conversation with Al-Monitor last month, after returning from his trip to the United States on Oct. 21. He said it even before the Shin Bet revealed Nov. 27 the involvement of what it called the “Hamas command center in Turkey” in planning terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and in training the bombers.
In an interview with IDF Radio after this disclosure, Minister of Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz called on the United States and NATO to apply pressure on Turkey to stop supporting terrorism. Senior officials in Ankara with whom I spoke following these remarks expressed concern that any official Israeli request to NATO in the same vein would only erode the bilateral relationship even further. From my own investigation into the matter, I learned that Israel did not make such an official request of NATO, at least not yet.
Senior diplomatic sources emphasize that Israel has absolutely no interest in reaching a state in which it must sever its relationship with Turkey. They add, however, that in the absence of any channel of communication between the two governments, publicly linking Turkey to Hamas terror is intended to show Ankara that there is a cost for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ongoing verbal assaults against Israel and the aid that he provides Hamas.
The accusations heard in Israel are yet another steep descent in the roller coaster ride that is the management of diplomatic relationship between the two countries. This relationship first started to deteriorate in 2009 when Erdogan, then prime minister of Turkey, lashed out at Shimon Peres, then president of Israel, at the World Economic Forum in Davos in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, which ended just a few days earlier.
