ISRAEL AND TURKEY: BAD NEW VIBRATIONS
Economist
ld/mideast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=130411 12
Jan 29 2009
The special relationship between the Turkish and Jewish states is
at risk
WIDESPREAD outrage over Israel’s assault on Gaza has sharply soured the
tone of Turkey’s people and government towards the Jewish state. The
prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, castigated it for hammering the
Palestinians. So far he has resisted a clamour in Turkey to loosen or
even sever his country’s close ties with Israel. But some advocates
of the strategic friendship between the two countries fear it may be
at risk.
Behind the scenes, Turkish policymakers, especially military
ones, still cherish their ties with Israel. Speaking this week in
Switzerland, Mr Erdogan seemed keen to draw a line under the row. He
explained that he was incensed by the war in Gaza particularly because
his tireless mediation had brought Israel and Syria close to a deal
over the Golan Heights. He said he had also been trying to fix a
deal with Hamas over a prisoner exchange, including freedom for a
kidnapped Israeli corporal.
Similar rows have occurred before. In 2004 he annoyed Israel by
calling it a terrorist state after it assassinated Hamas’s founder,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as he left a mosque in Gaza. Mr Erdogan then
invited Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’s present leader, to visit Turkey. But
Israeli-Turkish relations were mended after prodding by the United
States. Military co-operation went on. Israel has invariably chosen
to turn a deaf ear to Turkey’s occasionally fierce rhetoric for the
sake of that strategic liaison. In a bid to soothe the anger of Jews
and Israelis, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ali Babacan, urged Hamas to
decide "whether it wants to be an armed group or a political movement".
But this time Mr Erdogan had been a lot angrier. Israel, he railed,
was "committing a crime against humanity…The world must not turn a
blind eye to Israel’s savagery…How can such a country, which totally
ignores and does not implement the UN Security Council’s resolutions
be let through the gates of the UN?"
An education ministry circular particularly annoyed Israel by telling
Turkish schoolchildren to observe a minute’s silence in solidarity with
Palestinian children. In the event, the Israelis persuaded the Turks
to cancel a proposed essay and drawing contest for schoolchildren to
air their feelings of hatred towards Israel. Israeli officials were
apparently poised to respond by proposing a programme in Israeli
schools for discussing the genocide of Armenians by Turks in the
first world war.
In any case, anti-Israeli anger on Turkey’s streets rose during the
assault on Gaza. In rallies across the country demonstrators chanted
"Killer Israel! Nazi Israel! Turkish armies, march on Jerusalem!" Calls
to boycott Israeli goods and scrap military co-operation grew louder.
Not for the first time, anti-Semitism reared its head. In the western
city of Eskisehir, members of a nationalist group brandished placards
that read, "Only dogs can enter: no Armenians or Jews!" An outcry from
Turkey’s 25,000-strong Jewish community, plus pressure from the foreign
ministry, shamed a local prosecutor into launching a probe. Turkey’s
Jewish community issued a rare statement saying that "we Turkish Jews,
an inseparable part of the Turkish Republic, feel deep sorrow for
the comments appearing in recent days in certain media outlets that
belittle and insult our religion and present us as targets."
An ancient alliance Turks deny accusations of anti-Semitism, noting
that the Ottoman Sultans opened their doors over 500 years ago to
Jews fleeing from Christian persecution in Spain. In 1948, Turkey
was among the first countries to recognise Israel. Under a military
co-operation deal in 1996, Israeli pilots have been training in
Turkish skies. In 2007, bilateral trade rose to $2.7 billion. Between
2006 and 2007, the number of Israelis visiting Turkey went up from
362,000 to 511,400–more than 7% of Israel’s population. Turkey has
also earned praise from the Americans for its recent mediation between
Syria and Israel.
But anti-Semitism is often part of a general anti-Christian and
anti-Western feeling. "Jew" and "Armenian" are both often used as
slurs. Last year a Pew Global Attitudes Survey found that anti-Jewish
sentiment in Turkey had risen: 76% said they had negative views
towards Jews, whereas only 7% said they looked kindly on them.
Anti-Semitism was also blatant during a campaign against an Israeli
financier, Sammy Ofer, who had planned to invest with a Turkish
partner in rehabilitating Istanbul’s historic Galata district and its
port near the Golden Horn. The tender was cancelled amid widespread
claims that the deal was crooked and that "Jewish capital" was trying
to take over the country.
Radical Turkish Islamists have long tried to stir up
anti-Semitism. Their long-standing jibe against the secular Kemal
Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, was that he was "really a Jew". In
recent years assorted leftists and Kemalists have joined an anti-Jewish
chorus that frequently accompanies hostility to America, which is
often accused of plotting with Israel to set up an independent Kurdish
state in northern Iraq that will eventually take large chunks out of
south-eastern Turkey.
Behind-the-scenes lobbying by Turkish, American and European Union
diplomats may have persuaded Mr Erdogan to tone down his language. He
recently told Turkey’s parliament, "As a leader, I have said that
anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity." But if anti-Israeli
rhetoric in Turkey persists, the Israeli lobby in the United states
could hit back by backing a congressional resolution to call the
mass killings by Turks of some 1m Armenians "genocide". Hitherto,
Israel’s influential lobby in America has repeatedly helped block such
a resolution, though Barack Obama and his vice-president, Joe Biden,
have both referred to genocide in the past and have pledged to back
the bill.
Secret talks between Turkey and Armenia to open diplomatic ties
and reopen their borders are hotly opposed by some in the Armenian
diaspora’s lobby in America. American Jews have long felt queasy
about defending Turkey over the massacre of Armenians. Hitherto,
pragmatism has prevailed and they have sided with the Turks. But if
Mr Erdogan keeps on lambasting Israel, they may change their mind.