Tag: Natenyahu

A Turkey-Israel Opening

By SOLI OZEL and CHARLES A. KUPCHAN

During his recent visit to Israel, President Barack Obama pulled off a major breakthrough in relations between Israel and Turkey. After forging very close ties during the 1990s, Jerusalem and Ankara have of late gone their separate ways. The estrangement peaked as a result of Israel’s 2010 interdiction of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship that was attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli operation resulted in the death of nine activists on board the vessel. The Turkish government was incensed, and an Istanbul court went on to indict four Israeli commanders allegedly responsible for the mission.

On March 22, Obama succeeded in orchestrating a phone call from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Netanyahu apologized for the loss of life on the Mavi Marmara, a gesture that sets the stage for the repair of relations between the two countries.

This breakthrough, however, is only a tentative beginning; the rupture between Israel and Turkey runs deep. Unless Netanyahu’s apology is followed by a robust action plan for rekindling cooperation between the two countries, the current opening will prove nothing more than a fleeting flirtation.

For the better part of a decade, Turkey and Israel have been growing apart politically. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has Islamist leanings; confrontation with Israel is part of its popular appeal. The A.K.P. caters to a more conservative and religious cross-section of the Turkish electorate than the secular governments that preceded it. Indeed, Erdogan has undermined the political strength of Turkey’s traditional power base: the business elite and the military. The Turkish military has long had strong ties to Israel’s security establishment, meaning that its diminished domestic influence has weakened one of the main institutional linkages between Turkey and Israel.

Meanwhile, Israeli politics has been undergoing its own transformation. Netanyahu has presided over a rightward shift in the Israeli electorate, producing governments committed to expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank. By diminishing the prospects for a two-state solution, this stance has alienated the Turkish government as well as its electoral base. Iran’s nuclear program and the turmoil arising from the Arab Awakening have contributed to a siege mentality among many Israelis, weakening moderates who lament Israel’s growing international isolation.

With Turkish and Israeli politics heading in opposite directions, a meaningful and lasting repair of relations will be an uphill battle. Especially when it comes to the peace process and the fate of the Palestinians, Ankara and Jerusalem are miles apart. Turning back the clock is impossible; the traditional Turkish and Israeli constituencies in favor of strong ties are today too weak. Instead, a new partnership must be built from the ground up.

The new partnership should rest on three pillars, all of which entail concrete acts of cooperation.

First, Turkey and Israel should closely coordinate their efforts to contain the conflict in Syria and facilitate the prompt downfall of the Assad regime. Ankara and Jerusalem should share intelligence, team up to prevent arms flows to Hezbollah and other extremist groups, and work together to aid the Syrian opposition.

Over the horizon, Israel has a strong interest in securing a post-Assad Syria in which Turkey enjoys broad sway. The likely alternatives are chaos or a regime under the influence of radical forces. In the meantime, Israeli willingness to host Syrian refugees would improve its standing throughout the region.

Second, Turkey and Israel should further deepen their economic linkages, nurturing new constituencies in favor of a lasting rapprochement. Even since the Mavi Marmara incident, trade and investment between the two countries have continued to expand, a clear sign that private sectors on both sides are hungry for more commerce. Flights between Turkey and Israel are increasing in number. Jerusalem has also broached with Ankara a proposal to build an underwater pipeline from new Israeli gas fields in the Mediterranean to Turkey, affording Israel access to Europe’s lucrative energy market. Such joint projects would provide a firmer societal foundation for political reconciliation.

Third, Turkey and Israel, with support from the United States and the European Union, should launch a regional forum to address urgent issues of common concern, such as the violence in Syria, its implications for Lebanon and Iraq, and Iran’s nuclear program. Egypt should be at the table, and drawing Cairo into this forum would help anchor the country’s new leadership in regularized regional engagement. Israeli movement on the Palestinian peace process would help immeasurably in improving the prospects for constructive dialogue.

Progress on these three fronts is urgent. Netanyahu and Erdogan are both taking political risks by reaching out to each other. Their bold stroke may come to naught unless it is followed up by demonstrable cooperation between their two countries.

Charles Kupchan is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Soli Ozel is a lecturer at Kadir Has University and a columnist for the newspaper Haberturk.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on April 2, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.

via A Turkey-Israel Opening – NYTimes.com.

April 2, 2013
More on the “apology” to Turkey

More on the “apology” to Turkey

Posted on 03/31/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Lee Smith says that it wasn’t President Obama who got what he wanted. It was Bibi.

According to Obama’s senior advisers quoted in the New York Times, the president “prodded” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with Obama “raising the importance of a makeup phone call every day he was in Jerusalem.” Netanyahu’s apology, according to the Washington Post, was “bowing to a long-standing Turkish demand.”

The reality is somewhat different than the official administration account. Jerusalem has long been looking to mend relations with its onetime strategic ally in Ankara. Contrary to popular narrative, it was Erdogan who was intransigent—not Netanyahu. Nor was Obama the prime mover here, “prodding” the Israeli prime minister to do his bidding. If anything, it was Netanyahu who used the commander in chief as something like a blunt instrument to force Erdogan to accept the same deal that his government had first put on the table at least 18 months prior: Israel would apologize; it would pay compensation; but it would not, as Erdogan had demanded, end the maritime blockade of the strip.

From Netanyahu’s perspective, it’s all to the good that Obama is getting the credit for the reconciliation. Bibi got what he wanted from Erdogan and gave Obama a big trophy to put on his shelf. The Turkish premier, despite his bluster, has little choice but to swallow it, and the American president now owes Bibi a favor. Netanyahu—often denigrated as a clumsy politician and preachy ideologue—is in fact a much more adroit statesman than he is typically believed to be.

There is a lot of anger against Netanyahu for “apologizing” to Turkey. They cite stories like this, where the families of the terrorists killed on the Marvelous Marbles insist that they will not drop their lawsuit against the Israelis. Or the billboards in Turkey that thank Erdogan for “defeating” Israel. But Israel was not defeated, and her enemies are not emboldened. Saying it doesn’t make it so.

Erdogan wanted a full apology in which Israel took blame for killing Turkish citizens. He didn’t get it. Erdogan wanted Israel to completely lift the Gaza blockade. He didn’t get it. Erdogan wanted Israel to pay millions of dollars in compensation directly to the victims’ families. He didn’t get it.

This was not a win for Erdogan. It is a win for Netanyahu, and a win for Israel. Normalizing relations with Turkey gets one more thing out of the way during a very dangerous time for Israel. The Syrian war is threatening to run over all of its borders, not just the ones with Arab nations. Israel has set up a field hospital on its border with Syria.

Here’s Lee Smith’s conclusion:

What Obama truly deserves credit for—and it’s no small thing—is realizing that an ally in whom he’d invested so much confidence was essentially a blowhard. Moreover, he saw that Israel, with whom he’d had contentious relations, was an ally he could count on. And that’s a very big win in Netanyahu’s column.

I’m sticking with him and Barry Rubin on this issue. It’s a thorn out of Israel’s side, using the time-tested “I’m sorry if what I said offended you” non-apology apology. I can live with it.

via More on the “apology” to Turkey | Yourish.com.

April 1, 2013
Turkey Cracks the Whip
If Netanyahu wants rapprochement with Ankara, he must do more than apologize for the Mavi Marmara killings
By PHILIP GIRALDI • March 29, 2013
One of the surprise results of President Barack Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East was the last-minute phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey that took place from a hastily set-up trailer near the Tel Aviv airport as Obama was about to leave.

The two nations had once cooperated closely and were generally viewed as strategic partners, but the Turks had begun to distance themselves from Israeli policies in early 2009 when the Turkish prime minister confronted Israel’s President Shimon Peres at a January international meeting in Davos. Referring to the slaughter of Gazan civilians earlier that month during Operation Cast Lead, Erdogan told Peres, “you know well how to kill.” In the one-hour discussion of Gaza that was moderated by David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Peres was allowed 25 minutes to speak in defense of the Israeli attack. Erdogan was given 12 minutes. During the debate, Peres pointed accusingly at Erdogan and raised his voice. When Erdogan sought time to respond, Ignatius granted him a minute and then cut him off, claiming it was time to go to dinner. Erdogan complained about the treatment and left Davos, vowing never to return. Back in Turkey, he received a hero’s welcome.

The bilateral relationship then hit zero when, in June 2010, the Israelis boarded the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara in international waters. The Mavi Marmara had only humanitarian supplies on board, but the Israeli naval commandos from the elite Shayetet 13 unit were met by a number of Turks wielding improvised weapons made from the ship’s rails and deck chairs. The Israelis killed nine Turks, one of whom was also an American citizen; most were shot execution-style. Israel could have defused the crisis by admitting it had erred, apologizing, and offering to pay reparations, but refused to do so. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had personally directed the operation, claimed that the Israelis were acting in self-defense.

The Turkish connection was important because Turkey was the only predominantly Muslim country with which Israel had a truly friendly relationship. But Israel is much less important to Ankara. The prior warmth was based on common interests uniting the Israeli and Turkish militaries that never quite penetrated to the government level in Ankara, where Israel’s destabilizing role in a region that Turkey was increasingly seeing as its backyard was watched carefully. The military’s ability to influence events waned when the Turkish National Security Council, a powerful remnant of the last military coup consisting of high-ranking officers, was effectively delegitimized and broken by Erdogan. He also ordered the arrests of hundreds of senior officers who might or might not have been conspiring to overthrow him.

What is important to Erdogan is that Ankara’s strained relationship with Israel has created problems in Washington. Since the split, there have been numerous articles, mostly written by neocons, criticizing Turkey’s democratic credentials and its self-confident Islamic identity while asking whether the country is really “part of the West.” In the September 16, 2011 Washington Post Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, opined that Erdogan

now directly challenges our major alliance in the Middle East, and how far he will go is unclear … By threatening to militarily contest Israel’s blockade of Gaza … the Turkish government has laid down a serious challenge to American policy … Obama’s meeting with Erdogan on Tuesday is crucial. He can take a few important steps. He should immediately deploy 6th Fleet ships from Norfolk to the Eastern Mediterranean to signal that the United States will not tolerate even inadvertent naval clashes. He needs to make clear to Erdogan that the United States will not side with Turkey against Israel and that Turkey’s current strategy risks undermining regional stability.

In the same month, seven United States senators sent a letter to President Obama stating that

Turkey is shifting to a policy of confrontation, if not hostility, towards our allies in Israel and we urge you to mount a diplomatic offensive to reverse this course. We ask you to outline Turkey’s eroding support in Congress … and how its current ill-advised policy towards the State of Israel will also negatively reflect on U.S. Turkish relations and Turkey’s role in the future of NATO.

But the White House has never taken its eye off the ball regarding Turkey. Turkey is without any doubt the key player and most essential ally for the United States in the entire Near East region. It is frequently cited as an example of how democracy can function in a predominantly Islamic country. It is the NATO member with the largest army after that of the U.S., fought in the Korean War, has fully supported every U.S. intervention in its backyard save only Iraq in 2003, and shares long borders both with Syria and Iran. Whatever happens in Syria will largely be shaped by what Ankara decides to do, and President Obama knows it. Israel is understandably concerned about what might come out of the Syrian farrago and knows it too, so Obama was able to convince Netanyahu that if he wants to sit at the table when critical decisions are made about Syria, accommodating Turkey and Erdogan would be a necessary first step. So it was most definitely in Israel’s own interest as well as that of Washington to mend fences with Erdogan.

Netanyahu faced considerable internal opposition within his new coalition to making the call that Obama personally brokered. Netanyahu’s former Moldovan bouncer Avigdor Lieberman, who until recently provided comic relief as a foreign minister, immediatelydenounced the prime minister’s apology as a “serious mistake” before saying, “Such an apology harms IDF soldiers’ motivation and their willingness to go out on future missions, and strengthens the radical elements in the region. Worse still is the fact that the apology also affects Israel’s uncompromising struggle for righteousness, morality and for the morality of its soldiers.”

There was also considerable opposition from Turkey. Erdogan responded to the call somewhat reluctantly, according to Turkish sources, and only because Obama was involved. He accepted the Netanyahu apology but demanded that it first be put in writing before giving his verbal consent, reportedly because he did not trust the Israeli Prime Minister to stick with whatever wording might be agreed upon over the phone. The official Israeli version subsequently appeared in several forms in English on the Israeli Foreign Ministry website before it was agreed to by Ankara. It now reads that “Israel regrets … [due to] a number of operational mistakes … the loss of life or injury.” It agreed to “conclude an agreement on compensation/nonliability. Prime Minister Netanyahu also noted that Israel has substantially lifted the restrictions on the entry of civilian goods into the Palestinians territories, including Gaza…”

The Israeli and U.S. media initially reported that the two countries would restore full diplomatic relations, but that is incorrect. Erdogan has instructed his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, to establish a fair level of compensation for the families of the Mavi Marmara victims as well as for the shipowners, a sum likely to exceed $20 million, before improving ties in any way. And he has not committed to returning his ambassador to Tel Aviv. Turkey is also monitoring compliance with the pledge to ease entry to Gaza and the West Bank. Davutoglu reportedly sent a strongly worded message to Netanyahu regarding Israel’s new restrictions on Gazan fisherman, which went into effect two days after the three heads of government spoke on the phone.

Israel has also taken note of an independent announcement by Turkey that Erdogan would visit Gaza and the West Bank in April, while there have been rumors in the Turkish media that the current Turkish consul general in Jerusalem, Sakir Ozkan Torunlar, will be re-designated ambassador to Palestine, meaning full recognition of the Palestinian State, with all that implies.

Possibly most important of all is the fact that the Erdogan-Netanyahu agreement did not explicitly mention legal liability. In June 2012 Israel’s own state controller investigatedthe Mavi Marmara incident and, though absolving the military, noted “essential and significant flaws” in the operation as directed by Netanyahu. A simultaneous United Nations investigation called the use of force in the raid “excessive and unreasonable.” The Turkish Justice Ministry completed its own inquiry in the summer of 2012, resulting in criminal charges being filed against four senior Israeli military officers. That trial is scheduled to begin later this year with more than 500 witnesses prepared to provide eyewitness testimony for the in absentia proceedings. It all means that the rapprochement engineered by President Obama between Israel and Turkey is still very much a work in progress, and it is Ankara that is best placed to dictate the course of further developments.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
March 30, 2013
Apology to Turkey important for int’l affairs

Steinitz: Apology to Turkey important for int’l affairs

By JPOST.COM STAFF

New International Affairs Minister says reconciliation with Turkey will allow renewed discussion on Syria crisis.

Yuval Steinitz Photo: Hadas Parush

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu did the correct and rational thing by apologizing to Turkey last week over theMavi Marmara, International Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) said Friday evening in an interview with Channel 2. He added that in his opinion Israel should have apologized three years ago.

He noted that while the issue was important to the US, but the initiative was Israel’s. “We took into account that [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan would try to portray it as a victory,” he said.

Steinitz, however, said the the affair was not a matter of justice, but that relations with Turkey are important and reconciliation between the two countries will allow renewed discussion about the Syria crisis. He also said that the move should put an end to legal claims against IDF soldiers involved in the raid of theMavi Marmara flotilla that led to the death of nine Turks.

“We put the ball in their court… we did what we needed to do,” he opined, explaining that Netanyahu had decided to take advantage of US President Barack Obama’s visit to the region to put and end to the affair.

Also questioned on the state’s budget, the former finance minister said his replacement Yair Lapid is conveying the right overall message – that the budget is difficult.

“He is doing the right thing, he is preparing the public for tough cuts. There will always be cuts, but this time is will be particularly difficult,” Steinitz said. He pointed to recommendations made by the Trajtenberg Committee on Socioeconomic Change – brought about by the social justice movement – as a major cause of necessary budget cuts, saying that they costs 10 billion Shekels. “Now we need to fund those recommendations,” he said.

Steinitz, however, was keen to emphasize that relative to the economy in the rest of the world, Israel’s economy is in good shape.

March 30, 2013