After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly stated last week that he wants to improve relations with Israel, the Israeli government has decided to launch a low-profile outreach to Turkey to determine whether his intentions are genuine, two Israeli officials said. me.
Why it matters: Relations between Israel and Turkey, once close allies, started to deteriorate in 2008 and have entered a state of constant crisis. In 2018, Turkey deteriorated its diplomatic relations with Israel following unrest around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Driving the news: In recent weeks, Turkey has been sending ambiguous signals to Israel, either through the press or through third parties such as the President of Azerbaijan, as first reported by Axios.
- Last Friday, Erdoğan told reporters that Turkey maintains relations with Israel through intelligence channels, emphasizing, “We have some problems with the people at the top.”
- The Turkish president said his country cannot accept Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, but added, “Our hearts desire that we can move our relations with them to a better point.”
- The Israeli government is not sure how to read the signals from Turkey, but Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi decided to hold a meeting on the matter after Erdoğan’s comments.
- The meeting, which took place Wednesday at the State Department, was also attended by senior officials from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Defense Department and the Mossad.
What’s next: Israeli officials briefed on the meeting told me that Ashkenazi said he was sending “silent feelers” to the Turks through various channels to assess how serious Erdoğan really is in improving relations with Israel.
- Officials said Israel will not provide a formal, public response to Erdoğan’s comments and will seek to involve the Turkish government privately.
- The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment.
The big picture: Israeli officials believe Erdogan’s new tone is directly related to President-elect Joe Biden’s upcoming inauguration.
- Erdogan is concerned that Biden – whom the Turkish leader has called “an autocrat” – will take a hard line against Turkey, and that heating relations with Israel could score him points with the new US president.
- Israeli officials say they will be very careful given their suspicions about Erdoğan’s true intentions. In any case, Israel will not harm its relations with Greece and Cyprus in order to restore relations with Turkey.
Flashback: Israeli-Turkish relations have deteriorated since the Gaza war of 2008. Contacts were almost completely frozen after the Gaza Flotilla incident in 2010, in which Israeli commandos attacked activists trying to break through an Israeli blockade to provide aid to Gaza.
- Then-President Barack Obama facilitated a trilateral telephone call with Netanyahu and Erdoğan in 2013 to try to advance a reconciliation agreement.
- Those talks lasted until 2016, and the final deal was unraveled two years later when another crisis erupted over the Temple Mount.