During the February 2010 Munich Security Conference, the complicated nature of relations between Turkey and Israel was on full display. Speaking on a Middle East panel, Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Danny Ayalon, directed a snide comment at Saudi Arabia’s representative Turki al-Faysal for refusing to share the same platform with him. Al-Faysal, sitting in the audience, responded during the question and answer period that it was due to “your boorish conduct towards the Turkish ambassador.”
Israel had reprimanded the Turkish ambassador, some weeks earlier, over a Turkish television show, “Valley of the Wolves,” that depicted Israeli intelligence agents as baby killers. This was the second time in four months that Israel had complained about a Turkish show it deemed offensive, causing a major row to erupt between Turkey and Israel. And this came on the heels of an earlier dispute when Turkey disinvited Israel to participate in a military exercise.
In the end, Ayalon formally apologized in a written statement—but only after Ankara threatened to recall its ambassador. Remarkably, throughout the episode, the usually mercurial Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan kept his cool and let the diplomats handle the matter.
I asked a senior Turkish diplomat attending the Munich conference about the state of relations with Israel. His reply : “Which Israel ?” Indeed, only three days after that crisis finally ended, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak came to Turkey for an official visit and was greeted warmly. Barak made the point of showing his affection and closeness to Oğuz Çelikkol, Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, when he met the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.
Despite this cordial visit, the Turkish government, no less than the Turkish public, still seethes over the Gaza war. Erdoğan’s persistent and merciless attacks on Israel relate to either the war or the abysmal conditions of Gaza’s population. Considering the fact that Barak was one of the architects of that war as defense minister, it is noteworthy that he was shown such warm hospitality.
Barak is a staunch supporter of good relations with Turkey. Unlike his flamboyant colleague Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, he prefers not to provoke public fights with Turkey and
considers the relationship too precious for Israel to risk. Similarly, one could argue that Erdoğan’s uncharacteristically guarded reaction throughout this latest episode suggests an understanding for a line that should not be crossed.
However, one must be careful not to jump to simple conclusions about Turkish-Israeli relations. The periodic eruption of crises is more a function of structural causes and the changing strategic environment in the region than the proclivities of the principal actors. Turkey’s relations with Israel have always been ambivalent, particularly because of the Palestine question. This started to change dramatically in the mid 1990s, when the Oslo process was still alive and provided the necessary legitimacy for the shifting of the relationship to one of strategic alignment.
Turkey at the time had troubled relations with six out of its nine neighbors. It was fighting a counterinsurgency and counterterrorism war against the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) without getting much sympathy or support from its allies. Ankara also had the hard task of countering the machinations of anti-Turkish lobbies in the United States to get a fair hearing for its case, most notably on the Armenian question. Ankara received precious support from the Israeli lobby to stave off “genocide” resolutions in the U.S. Congress and developed a close relationship with some Jewish organizations. Israel in turn got what it wanted since its foundation : to publicly establish close links with Turkey and particularly with the Turkish military. As a result, Israel broke its isolation in the Middle East and benefited economically from these relations. Israeli citizens felt welcome in Istanbul or Antalya. Militarily the chance for the Israeli Air Force to train in the skies over the vast Konya valley was greatly appreciated.
The strategic environment that shaped Turkish-Israeli alignment in the mid 1990s changed drastically in the wake of the 2003 Iraq war, the disastrous consequences of which inevitably drew Turkey further into regional politics and deepened Ankara’s engagement with its neighborhood. Under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a vision began to take shape : Turkey must be engaged with all parties in the region without privileging any one of them.
The main tenet of the new foreign policy approach was to bolster Turkey’s economic prospects and create a zone of interests. Turkey wanted to generate regional stability and economic integration around itself and worked hard to create enough space for diplomacy in all troubling developments.
Ankara’s arguably amoral but pragmatic engagement with Syria in the wake of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was a consequence of this vision. Ultimately Turkey managed to bring Israel and Syria together for proxy negotiations despite American objections. In short, Turkey wanted a neighborhood that was devoid of conflict, sought economic integration, and expected peace and stability to emerge through engagement and dialogue.
In this perspective, reaching a closure in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had the pride of place. Without it, Ankara believed no sustainable stability or peace could be achieved in the region and Iran’s rising influence could not be curtailed. The Palestinian issue was not just a strategic component in Turkey’s thinking either. It was an emotionally burning matter for the general public and certainly for the prime minister and the core constituencies of his party.
This was the context of the Gaza war and the Turkish response to it. Having hosted then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert three days prior to the assault on Gaza in Ankara and having spent five and a half hours with him (and calling the Syrians on the phone to broker a final deal between the two parties), Erdoğan believed that he was taken for a ride by his guest.
The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza led to a furious outburst of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic public sentiment, helped by the Turkish prime minister’s careless discourse. This reached frenzied heights in the wake of the prime minister’s walk-out from a panel in Davos, Switzerland, where he had a bitter exchange with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
As things stand, Turkey and Israel appear to have two alternative visions of engagement with the Middle East. The strategic framework that allowed Israel to pursue its foreign policy as it saw fit (since 1967 and particularly since 1979) is no longer extant : Tel Aviv’s usual approach does not gain full support even from a timid American administration. Ankara on the other hand, because of its new found emphasis on stability, peace and economic integration in the region, is adamantly against the use of force and letting the Palestinian problem fester.
Whereas Ankara privileges peaceful engagement and stability for the entire region, Tel Aviv appears incapable of changing its ways and seriously try for a political resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians, however disoriented the latter might be.
Tel Aviv sees Iran as a threat to its survival and wishes to isolate the Islamic Republic and even threaten to bomb it to preempt its becoming a nuclear power. Ankara has no desire to have a nuclear-armed Iran either but opposes vehemently any military action against its neighbor.
The Lebanon and Gaza operations therefore brought forth the inherent tensions in the alignment. The AKP’s reaction was more a reflection of a structural conflict than an ideological predisposition, however passionate and at times offensive the Turkish prime minister’s rhetoric may have been during the Gaza operation and in its aftermath.
On the Israeli side, Barak and others appreciate the importance of the Turkish connection. Despite his harsh rhetoric that reflects both his emotional attachments and the domestic calculations of a savvy politician, Erdoğan never went so far as to break or even downgrade relations with Israel.
As Dr. Gökhan Bacık observes though, Turkey cannot afford to alienate Israel totally either. The ambitions of its foreign policy necessitate that it maintain good and credible relations with all the parties in the region. Neither should it lose its way in intra-Arab squabbles or render its foreign policy hostage to the, at times, delirious reactions of an excitable public. Just as Israel should not allow its current foreign minister’s world view and personality get in the way of safeguarding a critical strategic relation.
In the end, all valiant efforts for managing the relations may prove insufficient to prevent crises from erupting. The structural conflict inherent in two radically different ways of envisioning the Middle East, treating Iran, and of resolving the long festering Palestinian problem are likely to engender new flare-ups.
