By Steven A. Cook , The ATLANTIC Monthly, Jan 28 2013,
Tensions between Jerusalem
and Ankara run
too deeply for a single election to make much difference.
Since Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party's surprise
showing last week in
To be fair, the Turks themselves have led foreign observers to believe that a
change in Turkey-Israel relations was possible. For the better part of the last
four years, Turkish officials have indicated that Israel itself was not the problem,
but "this Israeli government," meaning, of course, Netanyahu's
outgoing coalition of right-of-center parties. It is true that it is difficult
to work with Prime Minister Netanyahu and that Foreign Minister Lieberman had,
contrary to his job description, a knack for aggravating relations with other
countries. Still, with the exception of the Mavi Marmara incident, the biggest
problems in the Turkey-Israel relationship -- the blockade of the Gaza Strip
and Operation Cast Lead -- predate Netanyahu's tenure. Indeed, the idea that a
new broader and allegedly more moderate Israeli coalition will lead to
reconciliation between Jerusalem and Ankara badly misreads the dynamics of Israel 's left-right politics, the profound
unpopularity of Israel in Turkey , and the centrality of the Middle East to the architects of Turkish foreign policy.
A handful of commentators have also zeroed in on
Turkey-Israel ties as ripe for rapprochement under a new, allegedly more
conciliatory, Israeli government. It is a nice idea, but so are rainbows and
unicorns.
Turks have often pointed to Israeli policy in the Gaza
Strip, especially the blockade of the area, as a prime example of its problems
with Netanyahu's previous government and the primary obstacle to better
relations. This is a principled position, but Ankara seems to have its chronology
incorrect. Israel's land closure of Gaza dates to June 2007 and the naval
blockade was implemented in January 2009 -- both under the premiership of Ehud
Olmert, who after leaving Likud to join Ariel Sharon in his breakaway Kadima
Party has developed a reputation as a centrist. There was no way that Netanyahu
was going to reverse Olmert's policies and there is a slim chance that that he
would do so now even with Yair Lapid -- who is not actually all that to the
left on foreign policy -- in his government.
Even if Israelis had given a resurgent Labor Party the most Knesset seats and its leader, Shelly Yachimovich, was tapped to form a government,Israel 's land
and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip would remain firmly in place. A
left-of-center government simply could not be perceived as being soft on
security and Gaza .
The cliché "only Labor can make war and only Likud can make peace"
was coined a long time ago, but it still holds today. Over the last two
decades, Israeli prime ministers have consistently been brought down from the
right often over some issue related to the country's security. Politics aside,
there really is not much disagreement among the country's major political
parties that Gaza poses a threat to Israel 's
security. If the Turkish demand that Israel
must lift its closure of Gaza is serious, and
there is little reason to believe that it is not, ties between Ankara
and Jerusalem
are likely to remain strained.
It is not just the Israeli politics of theGaza
blockade or the actual threat from Gaza
that is the problem in Turkey-Israel relations. Those who see an opportunity to
restore good ties with the emergence of a new Israeli government or who become
positively giddy at every leak of high-level contact between Turkish and
Israeli officials -- which the Turks invariably deny -- are not paying close
enough attention to Turkish politics. Israel
is not popular in Turkey and
never really was despite the blossoming of strategic relations between Jerusalem and Ankara
in 1996. Those ties served the Turkish General Staff's specific national
security and, importantly, domestic political interests at a time when the
officers' power was at its height. That was during an era before the rise of
the Justice and Development Party (AKP) when public opinion mattered very
little in Turkish foreign policy.
Prime Minister Erdogan, who is an astonishingly talented politician and has a keen sense of what makes average Turks tick, understands the political benefits that are derived from strained relations with Israel. To be sure, it took Erdogan some time before putting the bilateral relationship on ice. He visited Jerusalem in May of 2005 and invited his then counterpart, Ariel Sharon, to visit Ankara; but as he and the AKP grew more confident at home, relations with the United States improved, and Turkey became a player in the Middle East and wider Islamic world, it became easy to jettison ties with Israel with the approval of many Turks.Israel 's
only constituency in Turkey
includes parts of the business community, but even as Turkish-Israeli trade has
continued and even increased, there are few voices who want a resumption of the
alignment of the 1990s. Turkey 's
opposition rebukes Erdogan and the AKP mercilessly on a wide-range of issues,
but not on the quality of Ankara 's relations
with Jerusalem .
The fact that the prime minister has been able to leverage thePalestine issue to great political effect
without penalty suggests that the Turkish public's now manifest solidarity with
Palestinians was not just manufactured in 2002 when the AKP came to power.
Still, outright enmity toward Israel
was generally confined to Turkey 's
hard core Islamists even if the broader public remained wary of Ankara 's relations with Jerusalem
and critical of the Israel Defense Force's policies in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
This changed during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom when unsubstantiated stories of Israeli support for Kurdish independence in northernIraq surfaced in The New Yorker and Turkey 's less
well-regarded dailies. Then the way in which Erdogan exploited Israel's
Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009 and, of course, the Mavi
Marmara incident in May 2010, transformed solidarity with Palestinians into hostility
toward Israel, which has become political gold for Erdogan. The U.S. government believes that in Turkey 's last elections (June 2011), which
Erdogan won with almost 50 percent of the vote, Turks voted on two
"p's" -- their pocketbooks and Palestine .
Under these circumstances, Erdogan, who plans to be Turkey 's
president one day and who believes that the AKP will be dominant for at least
another decade, is unlikely to be receptive to a substantial improvement in Ankara 's ties with Jerusalem .
Even as Erdogan plans his path to theCankaya Palace ,
he is currently content to be "King of the Arab Street ." The Turkish prime
minister is consistently ranked the most popular world leader in polls of the
Arab world. Erdogan's standing is primarily a function of his position on Gaza,
but also his early call for Hosni Mubarak to leave office during the Egyptian
uprising, and Turkey's harboring of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees
fleeing Bashar al Assad's brutality. These policies are emblematic of a broader
Turkish engagement and activism in the Middle East
that distinguishes Erdogan and the AKP from previous Turkish governments. The
architects of Turkish foreign policy -- Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul, who
served as prime minister and foreign minister, and Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu -- believe that Turkey
is the natural leader of a region that the Ottomans once dominated as imperial
overlords.
The combination ofTurkey 's
economic might, diplomatic clout, and cultural affinity to Arabs and Muslims is
central to the prosperity and political development of the region. Some have
called this "neo-Ottomanism" to a fair amount of controversy, but
whatever it is called, Ankara could not truly be a regional leader, trouble
shooter, "inspiration," and economic engine, as well as the many
other designations and appellations Turkey has picked up over the last decade,
while simultaneously nurturing close ties with Israel.
The Turks were already suspect in the Arab world given the legacies of Ottoman colonialism, the Jacobin secularism of Mustafa Kemal, andAnkara 's institutional ties to the West
through NATO and its efforts to join the European Union. These deficits
ultimately proved to be surmountable, but at the cost of Turkey 's ties with Israel . Nothing about the way Turkey 's leaders view the world, the Middle East , and the Turkish role in it has changed now
that Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to make Yair Lapid his junior coalition
partner.
It has been 16 years since General Cevik Bir, thenTurkey 's
deputy chief-of-staff, revealed to an audience in Washington ,
DC that Ankara
and Jerusalem
had upgraded their ties to a strategic relationship that included a robust
security component. For some it was a golden age -- and even if that level of
cooperation and coordination is an artifact of the past, it is worth salvaging
Turkey-Israel relations. There has been every effort to do just this over the
course of the last four years to no avail. This is unfortunate, but the
disincentives for both Turkish and Israeli politicians to improve relations are
great.
Even if Israelis had given a resurgent Labor Party the most Knesset seats and its leader, Shelly Yachimovich, was tapped to form a government,
It is not just the Israeli politics of the
Prime Minister Erdogan, who is an astonishingly talented politician and has a keen sense of what makes average Turks tick, understands the political benefits that are derived from strained relations with Israel. To be sure, it took Erdogan some time before putting the bilateral relationship on ice. He visited Jerusalem in May of 2005 and invited his then counterpart, Ariel Sharon, to visit Ankara; but as he and the AKP grew more confident at home, relations with the United States improved, and Turkey became a player in the Middle East and wider Islamic world, it became easy to jettison ties with Israel with the approval of many Turks.
The fact that the prime minister has been able to leverage the
This changed during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom when unsubstantiated stories of Israeli support for Kurdish independence in northern
Even as Erdogan plans his path to the
The combination of
The Turks were already suspect in the Arab world given the legacies of Ottoman colonialism, the Jacobin secularism of Mustafa Kemal, and
It has been 16 years since General Cevik Bir, then
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group.
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