During his 20-plus years in various political offices, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been both the hero and the goat. It remains to be seen which role he will assume now that Turkey and Israel have announced the conditions of their reconciliation after 16 years.

As prime minister, Erdogan's silencing of Israel's then-President Shimon Peres with his now-historic “one minute” demarche at Davos 2009 accrued him vast prestige and delighted many people in the Middle East. In 2011, on the walls of three Palestinian camps I visited in Lebanon, I saw posters saluting Erdogan as a hero.

In 2010, had Turkey crashed through the Israeli blockade of Gaza with the Mavi Marmara flotilla, Erdogan would have been lauded as the long-awaited leader by the Islamic world. But it didn’t work out that way. Israel raided the boat and killed nine people on board (one more person died of injuries four years later). Turkey responded by saying it would take five measures against Israel:

• Lower the level of diplomatic relations.
• Suspend military agreements.
• Refuse to recognize the Gaza blockade and lodge a complaint with the International Court of Justice.
• Work to ensure freedom of navigation in the eastern Mediterranean.
• Initiate legal action for the victims.

Then Erdogan listed three conditions for normalizing relations with Israel: Israel must apologize, compensate victims' relatives and lift the Gaza blockade.