Turkey is feeling the squeeze. How else to explain President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks in late December signalling his interest in closer relations with Israel? Turkey has also reportedly picked a new ambassador to Israel to fill a post that has been left vacant for more than two years. Yet only four months before then, in August, Ankara had warned the United Arab Emirates that it was ready to suspend diplomatic ties and withdraw its ambassador from Abu Dhabi in the wake of the UAE’s proposed normalisation deal with Israel. Turkey described the deal as a betrayal of the Palestinian people.
Over the past decade, Turkey has been competing with Iran as the standard bearer of the Palestinians, doing exactly what the Soviets did during an earlier era: championing the Palestinian cause over the heads of moderate Arab leaders in a bid to strengthen its political influence in the region. Erdogan has been particularly outspoken in his condemnation of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Yet Turkey itself has enjoyed longstanding political, economic and strategic ties with Israel dating back to the 1950s. This strategic cooperation arguably reached its peak in the 1990s with Israel selling advanced weapons systems to Ankara. However, the strong bilateral relationship fell apart a few years after the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party under Erdogan in 2002.
Read the article by Azriel Bermant and Gallia Lindenstrauss in The Strategist.