Tag: Netanyahu

Israel’s apology to Turkey was anticipated, says minister

COMMERCE Minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis said yesterday that Israel’s apology to Turkey over the raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara had been anticipated.

Lakkotrypis is due to visit Israel next month, ahead of a visit by President Nicos Anastasiades in May.

“I assure you we are monitoring the situation and we will secure our state’s sovereign rights,” Lakkotrypis said.

The head of the Hydrocarbons State Company (KRETYK), Charles Ellinas, said that Israel has taken no decisions.

“I was in Israel last week and over there they examine all options… there is a chance they would sell natural gas to Turkey but at the same time they are looking into exporting to Cyprus,” Ellinas said.

Ankara Anatolia news agency has quoted Turkish energy minister Taner Tildiz as saying Turkey would suspend projects with Italian energy giant ENI in retaliation against the company’s involvement in oil and gas drilling off the coast of Cyprus.

The ENI/Kogas consortium is due to begin drilling for hydrocarbons in Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone by early next year.

ENI is also one of the partners in a pipeline project – the Samsun-Ceyhan – project from the Black Sea to the southern Mediterranean Turkish coast aiming to deliver Russian and Kazakh crude oil to Turkey.

‘We have decided not to work with ENI in Turkey, including suspending their ongoing projects,’ Taner Yildiz said.

But Fox Business said that ENI chief, Paolo Scaroni, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Rome that the Samsun-Ceyhan project was not viable as yet.

“This project is dormant as it isn’t profitable as long as the oil tanker rates to transport crude through the Bosphorous Straits remain at these (low) levels,” Scaroni was quoted as saying, adding that he was sorry about Turkey’s statements and was “hopeful” they could “find an accord”.

via Israel’s apology to Turkey was anticipated, says minister – Cyprus Mail.

March 29, 2013
Turkey badly needed to end row with Israel. Netanyahu’s apology gave Obama a diplomatic breakthrough

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu granted the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan a face-saver for ending their three-year rift out of willingness to crown US President Barack Obama’s three-day visit with an impressive diplomatic breakthrough. He swallowed Israel and its army’s pride and, at the airport, with Obama looking on, picked up the phone to Erdogan and apologized for the killing by Israeli soldiers of nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists in 2010 aboard the Mavi Marmara, which was leading a flotilla bound on busting the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The crowing comment by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu – “Turkey’s basic demands have been met; we got what we wanted” – was out of place, spiteful and ill-mannered.

He knows perfectly well that for the past year, amid a constant stream of ranting abuse from Ankara, Israel has been quietly responding to Turkey’s desperate need for cooperation in four essential fields, which are disclosed here by DEBKAfile:
1. The Turkish armed forces are heavily dependent on Israeli military technologies from the long years of the close alliance between the two countries, which Ankara cut short. This dependence applies most particularly to its drones, the backbone of today’s modern armies. It is also holding up the huge transaction for the sale of American Boeing Awacs electronic warning airplanes to Turkey.

Boeing was unable to deliver the aircraft without Jerusalem’s consent, because a key component, the early warning systems, is designed in Israel. This consent has been withheld in the face of Turkey’s urgent need and the US aviation firm’s impatience to consummate the deal.

Turkey is in need of those planes – not just to monitor events in neighboring wartorn Syria, but to complete its air defense lineup against Iranian ballistic missiles. Without the AWACs, the advanced FBX-radar system the US has stationed at the Turkish Kurecik air base is only partly operational. The Kurecik battery is linked to its equivalent at a US base in the Israeli Negev, a fact which Ankara chooses to conceal.

2. In view of the turmoil in Syria, the bulk of Turkey’s exports destined for the Persian Gulf and points farther east have been diverted to the Israeli ports of Haifa and Ashdod, whereas just a year ago, they went through Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Since no end is seen to the Syrian conflict and the closure of the Turkish-Syrian border, more and more export traffic from Turkey is making its way through Haifa port and thence by rail across Israel to Jordan. Turkish goods bound for destinations in Europe and the US are diverted to Israeli ports too as Egyptian ports are made increasingly dysfunctional by that country’s economic crisis..
3. In the first year of the Syrian uprising, when Davutoglu was still a frequent traveler to Damascus for talks with Bashar Assad, Ankara entertained high hopes of becoming a major player for resolving the Syrian debacle. But he also sought to strike a deal with the Lebanese Hizballah, Assad’s ally, for obstructing Israeli gas and oil exploration in the eastern Mediterranean
Three years on, Turkish leaders have woken up to the realization that they had better hurry up and jump aboard the US-backed Israeli energy bandwagon or else they will miss out on an outstanding and lucrative economic development, namely, the forthcoming opening up of a Mediterranean gas exporting route to Europe.

4. Turkey, Israel and Jordan are all in the same boat as targets for the approaching large-scale use of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons.
This topic was high on the agenda of President Obama’s talks with Jordan’s King Hussein Friday, March 21, in Amman, after he had explored the subject with Israel’s prime minister in Jerusalem.
Obama presented them with his plan to consolidate into a single US-led Turkish-Israeli-Jordan HQ the separate commands established six months ago in each of those countries to combat the use of unconventional weapons.
This unified command would stand ready to launch units of the four armies into coordinated land and air action inside Syria upon a signal from Washington.
The US president used his visits to Jerusalem and Amman to tie up the ends of this contingency plan with Netanyahu and Abdullah, while Secretary of State John Kerry got together with Erdogan in Ankara.

However, this four-way military effort to combat the Syrian chemical threat could not have taken off with Ankara and Jerusalem not on speaking terms.
This had been going on for three years, ever since Erdogan suspended military ties with Israel and downgraded diplomatic relations pending an Israeli apology for the Marmara incident, compensation for the victims and the lifting of its naval blockade on Gaza.

The Turkish prime minister insisted on the Israeli prime minister paying obeisance to Turkish national honor. And finally Netanyahu relented. But Israel stood its ground on the last condition; a UN probe had pronounced the Israeli blockade legal and legitimate although its raid on the Turkish ship was deemed “excessive.” So the blockade remains in place and, indeed, Friday, March 23, Israel’s new defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, tightened it by restricting the Gaza offshore areas open to Palestinian Mediterranean fishermen.

This was punishment for the four-rocket attack staged from Gaza on the Israeli town of Sderot Thursday, the second day of President Obama’s visit to Israel.
DEBKAfile’s military sources comment that the new defense minister may have also been directing a reproach at the prime minister for apologizing to Turkey and admitting to “operational errors,” thereby casting aspersions on the professionalism of the Israel Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit and its legitimate action in defense of Israel’s legal Gaza blockade

March 29, 2013
Israel, Turkey let bygones be bygones

By Editorial Board, Published: March 28

THE DARKENING situation in the Middle East has produced a silver lining. With Syria’s civil war intensifying and Iran showing no sign of slowing its nuclear program, Israel and Turkey have patched a nearly three-year-old rift. In a March 22 phone call stage-managed by President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the deaths of nine Turks in a 2010 Israeli raid on a ferry attempting to breach the sea blockade of the Gaza Strip. That should open the way for Israel and Turkey to begin sharing intelligence and strategies for managing the common threat they face from Syria — and to increase the pressure on Tehran.

Rapprochement between Turkey and Israel, two regional powers with stable democratic governments, has a compelling logic at a time when the Middle East is gripped by war and sectarian rivalry and Egypt and Iraq are consumed with internal turmoil. But the incipient makeup will require careful nurturing. Mr. Erdogan, who only a few weeks ago equated Zionism with “crimes against humanity,” has been undiplomatically crowing about Mr. Netanyahu’s apology; more troubling, he has insisted that the deal requires Israel to lift its sea blockade of Gaza, even though the statements issued by the two governments do not say that. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, whose behind-the-scenes cajoling helped to produce the breakthrough, will need to keep working to ensure that the accord does not crumble.

Washington Post Editorials

Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the editorial board. News reporters and editors never contribute to editorial board discussions, and editorial board members don’t have any role in news coverage.

Israel and Turkey’s reconciliation will help contain the threat from Syria.

Both governments, however, have powerful incentives to cooperate. As Mr. Netanyahu explained on his Facebook page, his decision to deliver an apology he had long refused was driven by the growing threat that Syria’s chemical weapons and other advanced arms may fall into the hands of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon or an al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria. The two governments can now pool intelligence — and they will need to communicate in the event that one or the other is compelled to take action to prevent the transfer of dangerous weapons. Israel can also take satisfaction over the alarm the accord prompted in Iran, which will worry that one constraint on Israeli military action against its nuclear facilities has been eased.

Mr. Erdogan, for his part, aspires to return to the role of regional statesman that he occupied before the Arab revolutions, when he sought to broker deals among Israel, Syria and the Palestinian Hamas movement. “We are at the beginning of a process of elevating Turkey to a position so that it will again have a say, initiative and power,” he boasted, while promising to visit Gaza next month.

That may be too much to expect: Mr. Netanyahu’s government is as unlikely to open negotiations with Hamas as it is to fully lift its Gaza blockade. Israel, for its part, has little hope that the strategic military cooperation it nurtured with Turkey before Mr. Erdogan came to power will be revived. Even modestly better relations with Turkey and Israel are nevertheless vital to U.S. interests in the Middle East — and to containing its growing disorder.

via Israel, Turkey let bygones be bygones – The Washington Post.

March 29, 2013
Now Obama needs to pressure Turkey

By Jonathan Schanzer and Emanuele Ottolenghi, Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S Department of the Treasury, is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Emanuele Ottolenghi, author of ‘The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,’ is a senior fellow. The views expressed are their own.

In a surprise development on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuissued an apology to Turkish Prime Minister Yayyip Erdoğan over the ill-fatedMay 2010 flotilla conflict on the high seas between Israeli commandos and Turkish-backed activists seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

The clashes left nine Turks dead. Erdoğan has been demanding an apology ever since, while ramping up his anti-Israel rhetoric – most recently, comparing Zionism with fascism. With relations at their nadir, the Israelis had nothing to lose by issuing this apology – Netanyahu’s apology was clearly a concession to U.S. President Barack Obama, who just garnered a great deal of goodwill during his much-heralded trip to Israel.

But if Obama plays his cards right, he should make demands of Erdoğan, too. The relationship between the two men is already warm. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Obama has logged more phone calls to Erdogan than to any world leader except British Prime Minister David Cameron.” But the president has ignored the fact that Turkey has also become one of the more troubling epicenters of illicit financial activity.

After delivering the Israeli apology to Turkey, Obama has an opportunity to demand that Erdoğan cease this activity.

For one, Turkey is believed to have emerged in recent years as one of the primary patrons of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. In December 2011, Erdoğan reportedly “instructed the Ministry of Finance to allocate $300 million to be sent to Hamas’ government in Gaza.” Since then, Turkey has reportedly provided Hamas with funds for hospitals, mosques, and schools in the Gaza Strip, with other resources to help rebuild the territory, particularly after the Hamas war with Israel in November 2012.

Turkey is not Hamas’ only sponsor, of course. There is Qatar, which has been on a regional spending spree. And there is also Iran, which has had a difficult time meeting its sponsorship obligations, thanks to Western sanctions designed to derail its nuclear program.

Sanctions won’t work, however, if Turkey has its way.

Iran has apparently been benefiting handsomely from Turkey’s Halkbank. According to Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, “In essence, gold exports [to Iran] end up like payments for our natural gas purchases.” In August 2012, according to Reuters, “nearly $2 billion worth of gold was sent to Dubai on behalf of Iranian buyers.” Halkbank acknowledged that it was responsible for processing the payments. Despite increased scrutiny, the Turkish newspaperZaman noted in January that the Iranian “gas-for-gold” was still going.

Halkbank, meanwhile, has reportedly helped Iran on other scores. In February 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that Halkbank was processing “payments from third parties for Iranian goods.” This included “payments for Indian refiners unable to pay Tehran for imported oil through their own banking system for fear of retribution from Washington.”

In November 2012, a Turkish banking watchdog announced Halkbank had curbed its illicit dealings. But the bank’s website clearly boasts of arepresentative office in Tehran.

To be fair, Halkbank is almost certainly not the only Turkish institution to have dabbled in sanctions busting schemes. In November 2012, the Turkish newspaper Zaman noted that there are currently over 2,000 Iranian companies registered in Turkey. How many of these companies have ties to the Iranian government? How many of them throw off cash to the regime? More importantly, how many of them help Tehran procure dual-use materials that brings the Iranian nuclear bomb one step closer to reality?

As it turns out, at least one does. German police recently exposed a networkthat supplied Iran with nuclear industry components through Turkey. But the announcement came only after hundreds of components for Iran’s Arak heavy water nuclear reactor made their way to Iran undetected.

Turkey can, in this case, claim that it had no knowledge of this network. But that won’t fly when it comes to the Turkish branches of Bank Mellat, an Iranian bank sanctioned by the U.S. and the EU. Turkey continues to allow the bank to operate on its soil because the United Nations has yet to designate it. According toZaman, as recently as April 2012, other Iranian banks have also applied to operate in Turkey’s financial market.

Part of the problem is Turkey’s legal regime. For more than five years, the Financial Action Task Force (the U.N. of terrorism finance) warned that Ankara had neither adequately criminalized terrorism finance nor established sufficient infrastructure to identify and freeze terrorist assets. FATF first flagged the problem, via a mutual evaluation, in 2007. Ankara did nothing for five years, until FATF threatened to add Turkey to the black list, which currently only includes Iran and North Korea. Erdogan and the Turkish parliament eeked out legislation and averted the blacklisting just shy of the February 22 deadline.

The result of this five year blackout and cavalier attitude to sanctioned Iranian financial institutions: Turkey was not bound to any laws, despite international pressure to fight terrorism or illicit nuclear proliferation. With over 2,000 Iranian companies involved in anything from energy to commodities, real estate to finance to the automotive sector, the potential for mischief is enormous. Had Turkey put its house in order, it might have been able to prevent significant embarrassment.

Turkey watchers quietly concede that more embarrassment is likely on the horizon. From Hezbollah assets to money-changers and gold dealers who do Iran’s bidding to government backing of jihadists in Syria, Turkey will remain an illicit finance problem for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to his ability to deliver Israel’s apology, Obama has increased leverage to reverse this trend.

March 28, 2013
The price of Turkey

While exorbitant sums are bandied about for the cost of reconciliation with Turkey, Lapid mulls drastic action to balance the budget

By YOSSI NACHEMI

After taking a day off for the Passover holiday, the Hebrew papers pick up on Wednesday right where they left off, with two stories dominating: Turkey and taxes.

Turkey is the lead story in Haaretz, with the headline focusing on the extent of the compensation to families of the Turkish casualties on the Mavi Marmara: “Turkey is demanding tens of millions of dollars.” Aside from the compensation issue, a Turkish government source casts doubt on one of the main reasons cited for the reconciliation — Syria. The source tells the paper that the two countries see different solutions to the Syria problem. “The Israeli mindset is for intelligence cooperation and not joint management of campaign in Syria,” he says.

Compensation talks with Turkey also make the front page of Israel Hayom, with the paper highlighting how far apart the two sides are on the figure. Israel’s opening number is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, with compensation going into a fund for the families of those killed. But despite those disagreements, there is already a thawing in relations, Israel Hayom reports, citing the Turkish newspaper Sabah to the effect that military cooperation will be renewed, even if in a limited scope for the time being.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that military ties are not the only aspect of the bilateral ties that would see an improvement. Israeli tourists, the paper says, are already returning to Turkey, just days after Netanyahu’s apology. One flight to Anatolia was hastily booked on Saturday night, just a day after Netanyahu called Erdogan to apologize, and was scheduled to leave on Wednesday. But that plane isn’t the only one leaving for Turkey: Two more flights are scheduled to depart on Thursday, perhaps marking Turkey’s reemergence as a prime vacation destination for Israelis.

Cuts and threats

Maariv focuses its front page on the upcoming budget battle and quotes the new minister of welfare, Meir Cohen of Yesh Atid, stating that he will oppose cuts to welfare, even if that means risking a “civil war.” But the dramatic language turns out to be slightly less so, when the article reports that the war wouldn’t be between segments of the Israeli population, but rather in his own party — it is Yesh Atid’s boss, Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who is proposing the cuts.

Yedioth highlights that Lapid might raise the retirement age in order to patch up some of the holes in the budget. The paper reports that Lapid is looking at a proposal to raise the age of retirement, to 70 for men, and 65 for women. Under the plan, the age would increase by one year by the year 2020, and then after that the additional years would be added on. The current age of retirement for men is 67, and for women is 64.

That’s not the only possibly drastic change, though. Lapid is also looking to shorten the required army service for men to 28 months, down from the current 36. The 24 months of required service for women would remain unchanged.

Haaretz focuses on Lapid’s choice between ending tax breaks or raising taxes. Ending the tax breaks for fruits and vegetables and cancelling the tax-free-zone status in Eilat could raise over NIS 3 billion, while raising two of the key tax rates could garner the state over NIS 6 billion. The paper reports that Lapid will have to make a decision in the coming days as to which route he will take when crafting the budget.

Out of Egypt

Maariv reports on the safe return of Amir Omar Hassan, the Israeli who was kidnapped in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday. MK Ahmad Tibi praised the Egyptian authorities for pursuing dual tracks in their effort to free Hassan: direct contact with the kidnappers, and the application of indirect pressure via other Bedouin tribal chiefs. Hassan’s brother, Yunis, said that the family was very excited and relieved to see Amir again. The Foreign Ministry also issued a statement: “We all are happy for Hassan’s family, and congratulate Amir. Welcome home.”

Hassan and his family aren’t the only ones relieved to be out of Egypt, as most of Israel celebrated the holiday of Passover on Tuesday. Israel Hayom reports how many people spent Tuesday’s holiday by visiting nature reserves, enjoying outdoor barbecues and sitting in traffic. That car-time won’t help burn off the rich foods served at the seder. The paper includes a chart of traditional foods served during the Passover meal, how many calories they contain, and how much exercise it takes to burn them off: matza-ball soup with two matzo balls is a mere 200 calories, which can be erased with 15 minutes of speed-walking; chocolate-covered matza — that’s 250 calories — can be burned off with 50 minutes of dancing.

In the opinion pages, Nadav Haetzni writes in Maariv that if Netanyahu is apologizing to Turkey, he needs to apologize to a lot of others in Israel too. At the top of Haetzni’s list is the Jewish Home party and especially Naftali Bennett, whom Haetzni feels Netanyahu unfairly bashed during the elections. Haetzni then moves on to President Shimon Peres, who supported the apology to Turkey. Haetzni writes, “If Peres is so keen on apologies, we have a list of real casualties that he himself caused. The first are more than 1,000 — Oslo victims who lost their lives because of his delusion known as the Oslo Accords, a rotten old vision of a new Middle East, a figment of his imagination.” After attacking Peres some more, he returns to his original idea: “I don’t know who decided to make Passover into Yom Kippur, but they should make sure that they are apologizing to the right people.”

Eitan Haber, writing in Yedioth, also tackles the apology to Turkey, summing up his opinion in the title of the piece: “Not love, interests.” He explains that it is in Israel’s best interest to restore ties with Turkey. “States don’t look for love. For states and their leaders there are just interests, and the prime minister of Turkey has gotten a lot of mileage out of riding Israel’s back.” He concedes that the apology may sting, but ends his piece by paraphrasing a Hebrew proverb: “Sometimes it doesn’t pay off to be right, but it’s always important to be wise.”

March 28, 2013
Israel’s apology to Turkey alters Mideast peace

Al Arabiya –

Israel’s apology to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara event will lead to an altered balance in the Middle East peace process, said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in an address to lawmakers on Tuesday.

Israeli forces killed nine Turkish nationals aboard a vessel carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza in the 2010 incident.

A bilateral deal has been struck whereby Israel must cooperate alongside the Turkish government over the region’s peace process.

The move represents a more assertive stance for Turkey with regard to regional politics.

“The point we have arrived to as a result of our consultations with all our brothers in Palestine and peripheral countries is increasing our responsibility with regard to solving the Palestinian question and thus bringing about a new equation,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Turkish Hurriyet daily.

The report added that Israel has agreed to cooperate with Turkey on carrying out talks with Palestine.

The Turkish prime minister also said that all regional interlocutors, including Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal, must admit that a new era has begun in the Middle East.

An important phone call

Erdoğan went on to outline details of phone conversations between himself, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama.

“I talked to him [Netanyahu] and we have reviewed the text and confirmed the apology process. We have therefore accomplished this process under Obama’s witness,” Erdoğan said, adding that the phone conversation was recorded along with a written statement which was issued by all three parties.

Turkish President Abdullah Gül made a statement on the Israeli apology during a joint press conference with visiting Cameroon President Paul Biya on Tuesday, saying: “Israel did what it had to do. Therefore I express my contentment of it. The issue is still very fresh, let’s all wait. This is just a first step.”

As well as apologizing for the Mavi Marmara killings, Israel will also pay compensation to the families of the victims and remove its blockade on Gaza. Talks on how the compensation is to be paid will be held in April between senior diplomats from both Turkey and Israel as part of the agreement made between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni.

via Israel’s apology to Turkey alters Mideast peace: Turkish PM – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

March 28, 2013