Turkey caught in conflicting alliances

This posting has 3 very short news items and a longer analytic article (4). It is interesting that there is as yet no news coverage of this in the English-language Turkish media.

1) Ma’an vews: Turkey appoints ambassador to State of Palestine;
2) Turkey appoints ambassador to ‘Palestine’, (note the inverted commas);
3) NY Times: Turkey Expels Israeli Envoy in Dispute Over Raid ;
4) Ramzy Baroud: Analysis: Turkey’s difficult choice in Palestine;

The Mavi Marmara, greeted rapturously on its return to Turkey in December 2010. It was boarded on May 31 by Israeli commandos who killed nine people on the boat which was trying to breach the blockade of Gaza. Photo by Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press

Turkey appoints ambassador to State of Palestine

By Ma’an news March 04, 2013

RAMALLAH — Turkey’s consul-general ?akir Özkan Torunlar was appointed ambassador to the State of Palestine on Tuesday. Torunlar met with Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki in Ramallah and pledged to work to enhance cooperation between Turkey and Palestine. Al-Maliki praised Turkey’s support for Palestine, particularly its support of Palestine’s successful bid to join the United Nations as a non-member state, a ministry statement said.

Turkey appoints ambassador to ‘Palestine’

One-time close ally of Israel gives consul-general in Ramallah an upgrade

By Times of Israel

March 06, 2013

Turkey has appointed an ambassador to the ‘State of Palestine’, Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported Tuesday night. Akir Ozkan Torunlar, Turkey’s current consul-general, is taking on the new honorific title as the nation’s representative to Ramallah. Though the Palestinians enjoy non-member state status at the United Nations, a “State of Palestine” is not recognized by most countries. Tornular met with PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki in Ramallah, according to the report, who thanked the Turkish diplomat for his nation’s support of last year’s successful Palestinian bid for non-member state status at the United Nations. Israel and Turkey enjoyed close diplomatic and business relations for years, but a gradual deterioration in ties was accelerated with the May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident, in which clashes between pro-Palestinian activists and IDF troops aboard the Mavi Marmara ship resulted in the deaths of nine activists, eight of them Turkish citizens, and injuries to several Israeli soldiers. Relations between Ankara and Jerusalem have since remained sour, with Turkey demanding an apology, and compensation for the families of those killed, as prerequisites for the renewal of ties.

Raphael Ahren contributed to this report.

Turkey Expels Israeli Envoy in Dispute Over Raid

NY Times

September 02, 2011

EXCERPT

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey said Friday that it was downgrading its diplomatic and military ties with Israel and expelling its ambassador in a display of anger at Israel’s refusal to apologize for a deadly commando raid last year on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey would reduce its diplomatic representation in Israel to the level of second secretary — one of the lowest diplomatic ranks — and had ordered Israel’s ambassador, Gabby Levy, to leave Turkey by Wednesday. The move stopped short of a complete breach in diplomatic relations but nonetheless seemed likely to deepen the already serious alienation between the countries and to further isolate Israel in the region as Arab Spring revolts threaten to undermine other previously stable relationships there.

Analysis: Turkey’s difficult choice in Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud

March 02, 2013

An Israeli-Turkish rapprochement is unmistakably underway, but unlike the heyday of their political alignment of the 1990’s, the revamped relationship is likely to be more guarded and will pose a greater challenge to Turkey rather than to Israel. Israeli media referenced a report by Turkish newspaper Radikal with much interest, regarding secret talks between Turkey and Israel that could yield an Israeli apology for its army’s raid against the Turkish aid flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, which was on its way to Gaza in May 2010. The assault resulted in the death of nine Turkish activists, including a US citizen.

The attack wrought a crisis unseen since the rise of the Turkish-Israeli alliance starting in 1984, followed by a full blown strategic partnership in 1996. But that crisis didn’t necessarily start at the Mavi Marmara deadly attack, or previous Israeli insults of Turkey. Nor did it begin with the Israeli so-called Operation Cast Lead against besieged Gaza in Dec 2008, which resulted in the death and wounding of thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians. According to the Radikal report (published Feb 20. and cited by Haaretz two days later), Israel is willing to meet two of Turkey’s conditions for the resumption of full ties: an apology, and compensation to the families of the victims.

“Turkey has also demanded Israel lift the siege,” on Gaza, Haaretz reported, citing Radikal, “but is prepared to drop that demand.” The reports of secret talks are not new. Similar reports had surfaced of talks in Geneva and Cairo. Turkish-Israeli reconciliation has, at least for a while, been an important item on the US foreign policy agenda in the Middle East, until few months ago when the US elections pushed everything else to the backseat.

But despite fiery rhetoric, the signs of a thawing conflict are obvious. Writing in Al-Ahram Weekly on Jan. 16, Galal Nassar attributed that Tel Aviv is working “its idiosyncratic ways to patch up what it regarded as a passing storm cloud in its relations with its friend, and perhaps strategic ally.” Turkey responded in kind in its decision “to lift its veto against Israeli participation in non-military activities in NATO.”

Leaked news of a political settlement are not the only headlines related to this topic. There is also the matter of military and economic cooperation, which are even more common. According to FlightGlobal.com, reporting on Feb. 21, the Israeli government has agreed to the delivery of electronic support measures equipment “to be installed on the Turkish air force’s new Boeing 737 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system aircraft.”

Meanwhile, a large Turkish conglomerate Zorlu Group “has been working in recent months to convince the Israeli government and the Leviathan gas field partners to approve energy exports to Turkey,” The Marker has learned, as reported in Haaretz on Feb. 14. This is only the tip of the iceberg. If these reports are even partially credible, Turkish-Israeli relations are being carefully, but decidedly repaired. This stands in contrast with declared Turkish foreign policy and the many passionate statements by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other leading Turkish politicians. Following a Nov. 16 Friday prayer, The New York Times reported from Istanbul that Erdogan denied any talks between his country and Israel regarding resolving a crisis instigated by another Israeli assault on Gaza. He went even further, “We do not have any connections in terms of dialogue with Israel,” he reportedly said. At a parliamentary meeting few days later, he described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as “ethnic cleansing.”

On Nov. 20, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Gaza on a solidarity visit, along with an Arab League delegation in an unprecedented show of solidarity. In a strange contrast with the spirit of his mission, however, “Davutoglu suggested to reporters that back-channel discussions had been opened with Israeli authorities,” according to the Times.

But why the contradictions, the apparent Turkish turnabout and if full rapprochement is in fact achieved, will the ruling Justice and Development Party be able to sustain its still successful brand in the Middle East that was largely achieved as a result of its pro-Palestinian policies? Here, we must get something straight; the strong and growing pro-Palestinian sentiment in Turkey is not the outcome of self-serving political agenda, neither of the AKP nor of any other. The support for Palestinians was most apparent in the June 2011 elections, which was convincingly won by the Erdogan party. “Turks voted on two ‘p’s’ — their pocketbooks and Palestine,” Steven A. Cook wrote in the Atlantic on Jan. 28. “Erdogan, who plans to be Turkey’s president one day and who believes that the AKP will be dominant for at least another decade, is unlikely to be receptive to a substantial improvement in Ankara’s ties with Jerusalem.”

If the centrality of Palestine is so essential to Turkish political awareness, then no ambitious politician – for example, Erdogan, Davutoglu or President Abdullah Gül – are likely to gamble with a major departure from their current policies.

That might be entirely true if one discounts the Syria factor, which along with the so-called Arab Spring has complicated Turkey’s regional standing that until two years ago was predicated on reaching out to Iran, Syria, Libya and other Middle Eastern partners. For years prior to the current turmoil, Turkey had cautiously yet cogently adopted a new foreign policy that aimed at balancing out its near total reliance on NATO and the West in general.

It mended its ties with its immediate neighbors in the East, including Iran, but polarization created by the Syria civil war has ended Turkey’s balancing act, at least for the time being. Turkey’s request for the deployment of Patriot missile batteries along its border with Syria, its role in supporting the Syria National Council and its attempt at coaxing various Kurdish groups in northern Iraq and Syria are all proving consistent with old Turkish policies. Indeed, Davutoglu’s zero-problems with neighbors doctrine is but a historical footnote. The Syrian war has placed Turkey back within a Western camp, although not with the same decisiveness of the past, when Turkey’s generals discounted all other alliances in favor of NATO’s.

This is representing an opening for Israel, which with the support of US President Barack Obama’s new administration is likely to translate to some measures of normalization. The degree of that normalization will depend largely on which direction the Syrian civil war is heading and the degree of receptiveness on Turkish streets in seeing Israel once more paraded as Turkey’s strategic partner. Some commentators suggest that Egypt’s own foreign policy towards Israel – Egypt currently being the main country in the Middle East with the ‘leverage’ of talking to both Israel and the Palestinians – is depriving Turkey from a strong bargaining position within NATO. By having no open contacts with Israel, some suggest Turkey is losing favor with the US and other western partners. Interestingly, Israel’s planned apology, according to Radikal, is supposedly timed with Obama’s visit to Israel in March.

Neither Turkey and Israel, nor the US and NATO are able to sustain the status quo – the rift between Israel and Turkey – for much longer. But returning to an old paradigm, where Turkey is no longer an advocate of Palestinian rights and a champion of Arab and Muslim causes, could prove even more costly. There can be no easy answers, especially as the region seems to be changing partly through unpredictable dynamics. Erdogan and his party may eventually concoct an answer. This could include Israel and a new set of balances that would allow them access to both East and West. But that answer would no longer be the upright, high-minding politics Erdogan constantly advocates, but instead good old self-serving policies and nothing else.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.