President Obama’s healing of the three-year rift between regional powerhouses Israel and Turkey is touted as the real accomplishment of his first visit to the Middle East as U.S. president last month.
During his first term in office, Obama had his own tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over continued Jewish settlement building and how to handle Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu has sought and failed to get “redlines” to trigger U.S. military action on Iran. He also criticized Obama’s suggestion in 2011 that Israel must finally accept a Palestinian state along 1967 border with “mutually agreed swaps” before the U.S. Congress.
He strong-armed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize formally to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Erdogan, over the 2010 killing by Israeli soldiers of nine Turkish activists on a protest ship bound for the Gaza Strip, thus clearing the way for a diplomatic reconciliation between the two former allies. Erdogan vowed ties would not be restored unless Israel apologized and compensated the families of those killed.
With compensation talks set for April 12 between the two sides, some political analysts wonder what has spurred the rapprochement at this time, particularly as Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, had also publicly stated that in addition to a full apology and compensation, the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip should be lifted. That, of course, has not happened.
Apparently, U.S. officials had tried to reconcile the feuding pair even before the outset of the two-year bloody civil war ravaging neighboring Syria. But the growing unrest there has made it imperative for the U.S. to have partners, Israel and Turkey, on board to work together on the crisis and other pressing regional threats.
“We attach great importance to the restoration of positive relations between them in order to advance regional peace and security,” Obama said, as he left Israel on March 22 just after the deal was brokered.
Israel had defied earlier calls to apologize. Activists on the Mavi Marmara flotilla were responsible for their deaths, it argued, because they violently resisted Israeli commandos who seized the ship as it tried to break Israel’s humanitarian blockade of the coastal strip.
Israel says it will pay compensation to the families of the activists, and in return, Turkey will drop its legal claims against Israeli soldiers. The country’s new international affairs minister Yuval Steinitz, said the move was “not a matter of justice,” but that relations with Turkey are important and reconciliation will allow renewed discussion on the Syrian crisis. He told Israel’s Channel 2 that his country should have apologized three years ago.
Of course, not all Israelis hold Steinitz’s views. Former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called the apology “a serious mistake.” Although Liberman cannot regain his ministerial office unless he is acquitted of bribery charges, he still heads the party Netanyahu depends on for parliamentary support.
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu has insisted that there is “no connection” between the apology and Turkish policy on Syria and its patron, Shiite Iran.
Other analysts, including Joseph Farah, writing in the G2 Bulletin, believe politics between the sides are still at play. He said a “further warming of relations” may take some time as Turkey still wants to hold on to its venerated ‘tough’ position vis-a-vis Israel on the Palestinian issue in the Muslim world.
Huge Pope, who has analyzed Turkish relations for more than 20 years and is a project director at the International Crisis Group in Istanbul, says that ties with Israel have only “flourished” at times when Israel “appeared to be genuinely working on a proper settlement” to resolve the long-simmering conflict with the Palestinians.
“Whatever government it is, Turkish opinion cannot accept a bad deal for the Palestinians,” Pope said. “So if Israel seriously wants a long-term partner in the region with Turkey, it depends on how Israel treats the Palestinians,” he added.
Some say that Obama’s surprise announcement on Turkey took the heat off him in his Middle East tour with no other progress reportedly made on Syria, Iran or the Palestinian issue.
But Pope says that regardless of what else may have not been achieved during the trip, the rapprochement is a “major success” for Obama.
He said the rift between key regional allies Israel and Turkey — “who had been at each other’s rhetoric throats” — had been a huge concern to Washington and a relationship it had tried to put right for some time. Obama “succeeded in returning it to its proper footing.”
Pope believes Erdogan’s move toward rapprochement with Israel is “one that public opinion was ready for.”
“Remember normalization hasn’t happened yet, just the apology. For Erdogan to accept someone’s apology is not difficult,” he said. “The difficult stages are accepting Israeli visitors, exchanging ambassadors. That is something Turkey hasn’t yet accomplished.”
Pope and other analysts also believe the lure of Israeli natural gas may have also ‘sweetened’ the incentive to rebuild the once-strong Israeli-Turkish alliance.
Tamar gas field, with an estimated 8.5 trillion cubic feet, has started flowing to the Israeli market. Whereas the Leviathan field, boasting a projected 16 to 18 trillion cubic feet of gas, could go online in three years, the same time exports are expected to begin.
The Wall Street Journal argues that the possible export of billions of dollars of Israeli natural gas to Turkey and beyond was a compelling economic incentive to get relations back on track.
The newspaper, quoting former Israeli envoy to Turkey Alon Liel, said quiet contacts were made between the two sides even prior to the Israeli apology about the export of gas through Turkey.
“Cyprus is collapsing economically, and Israel understood it could not realize its plans for export through Cyprus,” Liel reportedly told the WSJ.
“Turkey’s fast growing economy is the lowest-cost export destination for energy discovered off the Israeli coast in recent years,” the March 27 article said, quoting an unnamed Israeli analyst. “Such a transaction could result in a supply arrangement for as much as $4 billion a year.”
Energy analysts expect Turkey’s demand for natural gas to double by 2025. But beyond domestic needs, they say that the Mediterranean reserves could feed a pipeline Turkey envisions linking gas fields in Asia to Europe.
However, the WSJ reports that officials on both sides have downplayed the imminent signing of an energy deal.
Israeli tourism is also another sector the Turks would like to see built up once again, but industry experts believe that, too, will take time.
Turkey was once a top travel destination for Israeli tourists before the 2010 deadly raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla with more than a half million Israelis visiting Turkey in 2008. Less than one-fifth of that number traveled there last year.