ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News
A Turkish-Israeli Business Council meeting scheduled for Dec. 1 has been postponed, demonstrating that tensions between the two countries that peaked following Israeli soldiers’ killing of nine Turkish activists in May have not abated.
The council meeting, which took place in November last year when Israel’s Trade, Economy and Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer visited Turkey, was set to take place in Tel Aviv this time around.
Officials from Turkey’s Foreign Economic Relations Board, or DEİK, the organizer of the meeting, declined to elaborate on the reasons for the postponement and said they hoped to hold the meeting with broader participation in the future. However, an Israeli official questioned whether the postponement was a result of government pressure on business.
Israeli Consul for Economic Affairs Doron Abrahami said the organizers of the event did not state any reason for the cancellation. “Maybe there’s a government influence to cancel it, but I really don’t know,” he told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Friday.
Organizers, contacted by the Daily News, gave the example of a previous Turkish-American Business Council meeting, which was canceled after the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution describing the killings of Armenians in 1915 as genocide. That meeting, they said, was going to take place last April, but following the Turkish decision to cancel it was held seven months later in November.
The Turkish-Israeli Business Council meeting may take place in the forthcoming period, organizers said on condition of anonymity.
Abrahami, however, said the justification of linking the Turkish-American business meeting’s postponement with the Turk-Israeli council was not a good example. “That meeting was also canceled because of political reasons,” he said.
The cancellation comes as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Lebanon repeated calls to establish a kind of a Schengen zone with Middle Eastern countries, excluding Israel. Turkey wants to establish a free trade zone with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, whose government leaders are expected to meet in January to realize the plans.
Analysts expressed fears that political tension in Turkish-Israeli ties is now spreading to business relations. “I think it is very unfortunate that the government of Turkey allows political disagreements with Israel to affect business relations,” said Ariel Cohen of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
Cohen told the Daily News he had predicted for a while “deliberate undermining” of the ties that took both sides a lot of effort to build would eventually come. “Military and diplomatic ties are being derailed. Sooner or later it will start affecting business. It is very unfortunate,” he said. “I hope that this will be reversed and the business community has enough sense to appeal to the government of Turkey … not to derail business ties. But I am not optimistic,” he said.