NY HOSTS MEETING BETWEEN ERDOGAN, US-JEWISH GROUPS AFTER DAVOS SPAT

Today’s Zaman
Sept 22 2009
Turkey

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s first meeting upon his arrival
in New York on Monday was with representatives of leading US-Jewish
groups, the first time he had held such meetings since an incident
dubbed "the Davos spat."

Erdogan, who arrived in New York to attend the UN General Assembly
and then a G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pa., gathered with around 50
representatives of New York and Washington-based US-Jewish groups among
whom Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL), was also present.

The meeting took place at the Plaza Hotel, where Erdogan and his
accompanying delegation have been staying. Relations between Turkey and
Israel, regional allies who cooperate particularly in the military and
defense arena, were strained after the Israeli army launched a deadly
offensive in Gaza last December, leaving more than 1,300 people dead.

Erdogan walked out of a World Economic Forum session in Davos,
Switzerland, in late January after an angry exchange with Israeli
President Shimon Peres over the Gaza operation. But tension later
subsided and dialogue between the two countries has been restored. In
June, then-Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan,
who is now Turkey’s permanent representative to the UN, visited
Israel. Apakan then had talks on political and economic cooperation
with Yossi Gal, director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. The
senior officials agreed that relations between the two countries
should continue to improve.

Foxman, speaking with ANKA news agency after the meeting, called the
Davos spat "history," while the Anatolia news agency cited anonymous
sources as saying that the meeting’s environment was positive. "Neither
Erdogan nor us opened up this issue [Davos] during the meeting. It
was a very positive meeting. Indeed, we have buried the Davos incident
in history," Foxman, meanwhile, was quoted as saying by ANKA.

‘Davos part of history now’

"For us, what matters is the fact that Prime Minister Erdogan received
us first as soon as he came to New York. This is an important point
for us because Prime Minister Erdogan has shown the importance he
attached to us as well as to relations between Turkey and Israel,"
Foxman also said.

Turkey maintains good relations with Arab nations as well as with
Israel. In recent years, it has sought to play a more active role in
the Middle East. It mediated several rounds of indirect peace talks
between Syria and Israel. Yet, earlier this month, a senior Israeli
government official said Israel, under right-wing Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, would not resume Turkish-mediated peace talks
with Syria, insisting that any new negotiations be direct.

Within days of the Davos incident, Foxman had welcomed Erdogan’s
remarks in which he made clear that his reaction in Davos did not
target Israeli or Jewish people at all. "We welcome Prime Minister
Erdogan’s comment upon returning to Ä°stanbul that his criticism was
not directed toward the Israeli people or Jews. We believe that a
more moderate tone in the prime minister’s criticism of Israel would
help to tamp down the recent outpouring of anti-Semitism in Turkey,"
Foxman had said then.

After pressure from Armenian groups and some members of the ADL, Foxman
reversed in 2007 the organization’s long-held policy and decided to
call the killings of Anatolian Armenians during the World War I era
genocide. But Foxman insists that two resolutions pending in the US
Congress endorsing the genocide claims would not help resolve the
dispute between Turks and Armenians.

During the meeting at the Plaza Hotel, Erdogan told the group that
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose
Minsk Group has been working for a decade and a half to mediate the
Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has been
making a significant contribution to ongoing efforts for normalization
of ties between Armenia and Turkey, Anatolia reported. He added
that the Minsk Group, one of the three co-chairs of which is the
United States along with France and Russia, should intensify its
efforts for making more contributions to the normalization process,
the agency said.

While the US-Jewish representatives expressed concern over the spread
of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the Middle East as well as
over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated denial of the
Holocaust, Erdogan voiced Turkey’s objection to all kinds of WMDs and
nuclear weapons both in its region and in the entire world, Anatolia
said, citing the same anonymous sources.

The US-Jewish representatives, meanwhile, conveyed the pleasure
of the Jewish community in Turkey over the fact that the issue
of discrimination was the first lesson for the 2009-2010 year at
elementary and high schools throughout Turkey which started earlier
this month.