By Ron Ben-Yishai, YNET
Despite Turkish announcement – which sounds dramatic – it will not have profound effect on existing state of relations between two nations, leaving room for bridging gaps in the future
As expected, Turkey was infuriated by the publication of the Palmer Report and Israel’s refusal to apologize for its takeover of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara vessel in 2010.
With that being said, its response is not extreme, leaving room for rehabilitating relations in the future – via low-profile, secretive talks mediated by the US. Perhaps even in the near future.
The first reason behind Turkey’s decision not to completely break ranks with Israel is its desire to maintain its position as a major Mideast player. Without ties with Israel, Turkey would have a limited ability to shape and influence events in the region, which is currently undergoing rapid change and fluctuation.
Turkey has recently lost all its clout in Syria and in Libya. It did not demonstrate superb diplomatic skills. Ankara and Cairo are also competing behind the scenes, while ties with Israel are an important asset to counter Egypt and Iran.
The second reason is the United States. Turkey is extremely important to the Americans, especially in relation to the planned US military withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Ankara is an important eastern bloc member of the US-led NATO alliance. Its geographic location enables the Americans to carry out quick logistical operations from and to the countries where fighting is taking place. Turkey also plays a major role in maintaining stability in Iraq.
It is because of the above reasons that Turkey refrained from firing all its cannons, reacting in a relatively restrained fashion – despite the reverberating headlines – to Israel’s refusal to apologize. The response can be divided into two – a military aspect and a diplomatic aspect.
Diplomatically, Ankara decided to further reduce its representation in Israel to a second-secretary level. In fact, Turkey is reinstating the level of ties that existed between the nations in the 1980s, prior to the Oslo Accords. Ambassador Gaby Levy is about to end his tenure in Ankara and is currently on vacation in Israel. The Turkish ambassador to Israel has long since returned to Turkey after he had been recalled for “consultations”. Diplomatic relations are still intact as consular ties will continue as usual. Strategic consultations, in any case, are held between senior officials.
In addition, Ankara hasn’t changed at all the entry and exit arrangements of Israelis from and to Turkey, and did not even suggest a possible change in the economic ties between the nations, which amount to tens of billions of dollars.
As to the military relations, these were very warm in the past and centered on intelligence, joint aerial and naval maneuvers, and Turkish defense spending in Israel. Since the 2010 flotilla, Ankara canceled all joint maneuvers. As a result, other NATO members canceled their participation in a major aerial maneuver in Turkey. A naval exercise had also been called off.
It can be said that by severing its military cooperation with Israel, Turkey lost more than Israel since it can no longer share the vast experience of Israel’s pilots and ground crews. The benefactor of this downgrade in military ties is Turkey’s arch-rival Greece, as Israel upgraded its ties with Athens to replace Turkish exercising grounds that were no longer made available.
With regards to the intelligence cooperation, words must be minced but it too ceased from being intimate as it was prior to the flotilla. The reason for this is that a year ago, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan appointed his confidant and member of the Islamic party to head the country’s external intelligence service. The appointment and Turkey’s warming relations with Iran resulted in Israel reexamining its intelligence connections.
The Turks reacted in the same manner last year, so its announcement of freezing military relations with Israel is no great loss. The security-related cooperation with Turkey has been frozen over a year ago.
It remains unclear whether Turkey has also halted its defense acquisitions in Israel but it doesn’t matter much. Since ties took a turn for the worse 18 months ago, there have been no major defense contract signings between the Israeli and Turkish defense industries. Israel, however, decided not to stall agreements that had already been signed, including a major deal involving unmanned aerial vehicles that has already been completed.
Israel also sold to Turkey the Lorop system that enables fighter jets to take photos from a distance of 100 kilometers without jeopardizing the aircraft. At first, the defense establishment pondered whether to sell this advanced system, fearing it could fall into the hands of a third party, but in May this year it was decided to go through with the deal and it is now being executed. It is worth many tens of millions of dollars. Aside from this contract, there are hardly any defense trade ties between Turkey and Israel, except for maintenance of old agreements.
If Turkey decides to halt defense contracts with Israel, the damage to the Israeli economy would not be significant, although the defense industries would further suffer from a market loss worth billions going back to the previous decade.
The military relations between Turkey and Israel have taken a blow since the Islamic takeover of the Turkish army’s brass, at the expense of the old brass, which tried very hard to maintain what was left of the relations with Israel.
That is why despite the Turkish announcement from today – which sounds dramatic – it will not have a profound effect on the existing state of relations between the two nations, leaving room for bridging the gaps in the future.
As part of the above strategy, publicity ought to be aimed also at shaming the NATO counties enough that Turkey won’t be able to use NATO’s mutual defense clauses if belligerence ensues.
We still have a few “useful idiots” even in this group. Before World War II the US sold Japan tons of scrap metal. It all came back as bombs on Pearl Harbor and on US troops. Turkey has made its intentions clear, just as Iran did earlier. Israel must stop selling arms to Turkey, including spare parts at once, despite any political clout of Israeli arms mabnufacturers. It must then move immediately to the ICJ and UN security council over both Cyprus and the Armenian Genocide, with maximum publicity. That ought to clear a few minds.
Israel has citizens of Armenian extraction; that ought to give it “standing” to sue.
I think Turkey is a massive player in the end times , ask Walid Shoebat about Turkey.
The writer is essentially all suck and spit.
They just cannot, will not fet of their pertch and call it for what it is.
The mixture of islam and Turkish imperial hopes and plans are historical not a new decision.
Naturally there is no gain from reciprocal barking, but Israel can and must use the means we have to nake it clear to don Erdogan that it is not a good move to try his hand on us.
I sense that the setting will develop that way.
UNLESS… Turkey plays its option to harm our oil and natural gas interests.
In that case Israel must make Turkey pay a terrible price.
The author of this article spits and sucks at the same time. First he points out the losses incurred by the rupture of the previously close relationships and then immediately proceeds to minimize impact of these same losses.
Surely, one needs not be an expert to recognize the negatives of this development.
In time this damage will be put aside and life will go on, but the loss of Turkish “friendship” will not be replaced with Greek “warming up.”
In strategic, cultural and economic benefits lost, Israel has suffered a significan setback.
Israel still has major economic interests in Turkey, up to several billion dollars a year, mainly in terms of military equipment sales and anti terror security equipment and training.
Thus it is in Israel’s economic interest to keep this dispute as much as possible in the political realm and to prevent it as much as is possible from deteriorating even further.
Of course, given the stubbornly aggressive and hostile attitude of the Erdogan government in Turkey towards Israel this may prove very difficult and even impossible.
On the other hand, Israel and the West realize that there are important elements in Turkey itself, and not just the miitary, which are aghast at the incredibly short sighted and stupid Erdogan foreign policies towards Israel and by the way NATO. They see Erdogan as trying to drag Turkey back into the Dark Ages and somehow reestablish the Ottoman Empire and reduce the modern state of Turkey to that of an ignorant, impoverished, and violent anti Western pariah state, loved by the Islamists but despised by the modern developed United States and European Union.
There is always the chance that these anti Erdogan elements will gain ascendancy as the Turkish public begins to see that Erdogan is leading Turkey into an Islamic cul de sac and ultimately a self inflicted failure.
Ron Ben Yishai is an idiot. The Islamists in Turkey are not interested in any kind of relations with Israel. To the contrary, Turkey is pursuing political, legal and economic warfare against Israel. This is not the behavior of a friendly state. If Turkey wants to sue Israel, Israel should bring up Turkey’s own violence against its Kurdish population and highlight its illegal occupation of Cyprus, recognized by no country on earth. Two can play this game and it will hurt Turkey a lot more than it will ever hurt Israel.