Turkey Has Guts to Say to Israel:
`We Will Not Condone Genocide’

Turkey and Israel’s once-close relations have been hurt by the Gaza
war. Turkey canceled military exercises this week, while Israel
protested a Turkey state-TV series that shows Israelis killing
Palestinians in cold blood.

uts_202.html
(Issue # 48, November 30, 2009)

By Yigal Schleifer

Israel and Turkey’s once-close ties have entered a frosty period in
recent years, particularly since Israel’s invasion of Gaza this past
January. But ties
between the two countries took a further dive recently when Turkey
indefinitely postponed annual military exercises because of Israel’s
planned involvement.

Israeli officials this week also expressed outrage over a new drama
series being shown on Turkish state television that shows Israeli
soldiers mercilessly killing Palestinians, including one scene of a
soldier shooting a young girl at point-blank range.

Observers say the new tension between the two countries may be another
indication that Turkey’s changing domestic and foreign policy
considerations are leading to a redefinition of the country’s
relationship with Israel.

`In Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s ideological framework,
Israel doesn’t play a central role. Things have changed,’ says Ofra
Bengio, an expert on Turkey at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle
Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Ankara, for the past few years, has actively sought to establish
itself as a kind of regional soft-power broker, working to strengthen
relations with neighbors that it has previously kept at an arm’s
length, most notably Syria and Iran, both of which flank its eastern
border.

Turkey also inked an agreement with Armenia recently that will move
the two long-hostile countries toward renewed diplomatic ties.

Davutoglu – the main architect of this new foreign policy – and 10 other
ministers visited Syria on Oct. 13 for the first meeting of a newly
created `Strategic Cooperation Council’ and to sign an agreement doing
away with visa requirements between the two countries. This change
reflects a fundamental shift from the period when Turkey and Israel
began developing their strategic relationship. At the time, the two
looked at countries like Syria as a common threat. Turkey and Syria
almost went to war in the late 1990s after Ankara accused Damascus of
supporting the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

But observers say that domestic changes in Turkey, particularly the
diminishing power of the military, are also playing a role in the
changing nature of Turkey and Israel’s relationship.

`Had it been up to the military, the exercise would have continued as
planned, but the military can’t dictate its policies on the government
the way it used to,’ says Lale Kemal, a military affairs analyst based
in Ankara. `The equation is changing. We see this in other areas and
in the Turkish-Israeli relationship also.’

Yigal Schleifer is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul. His work
has appeared in many newspapers.