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MIDEAST: Cold Turkey Could Change Political Balance
Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Oct 13 (IPS) - It's long been among the most durable, strategic relationships in the Near East -
perhaps because it was the most unlikely.
For decades, the two regional superpowers, Turkey and Israel, have quietly
stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the common strategic challenges facing
them.
For the past 20 years, the intriguing involvement between Jewish Israel and
Muslim Turkey has been increasingly out in the open, impervious to demands
from the Arab world and from hard-line elements in Turkey - both Muslim
and left-wing - that Turkey should rather distance itself from its elaborate
military and intelligence dealings with Israel.
Now it's all changing.
Or, is it just a temporary blip?
On Sunday, Israel disclosed that joint North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) air force exercises, codenamed Anatolian Eagle, had been postponed
because Turkey was excluding the Israeli air force. The drill was scheduled to
have included the United States and Italy. Both pulled out after the Turkish
ban.
The war games were due to have been based in the central Anatolian city of
Konya, and were reportedly to have involved bombing runs in airspace near
the Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi borders.
"It is wrong to derive a political meaning or conclusion from the postponing
of the international part of the exercise," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in
a bland statement.
But, speaking Sunday night on CNN International television, Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu alluded to the fact that the exclusion of Israel was
linked to lingering anger in Turkey over Israel's unrestrained war on Hamas in
Gaza at the beginning of the year.
Davutoglu said, "We hope that the situation in Gaza will be improved, that
the situation will be back to the diplomatic track, and that will create a new
atmosphere in Turkish-Israeli relations as well.
"But," he added, "in the existing situation, of course, we are criticising the
Israeli approach."
Turkish fury was rekindled following publication of the UN's Goldstone
Report which alleges that Israel has committed war crimes. Turkish Prime
Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan has been at the forefront in criticising the
decision to shelve discussion of the report at the UN Human Rights Council.
The ban is not the first time Turkey has shown its displeasure publicly with
Israel over the Gaza offensive.
In January, Erdogan stormed out of a conference during the World Economic
Forum in Switzerland after he had upbraided Israeli President Shimon Peres
over the extent of Palestinian casualties in Gaza, telling him, "you know well
how to kill people."
And, last month, Davutoglu cancelled a visit to Israel because the Israeli
authorities indicated they would not welcome him visiting Gaza on the same
trip.
These incidents have compounded the strain which political ties between the
two states have been under since the Islamist-rooted AK Party was elected to
power in 2002.
The leading Turkish daily Hurriyet suggests that the "icy new tone" in
relations is unlikely to be relieved any time soon. The war games have been
"delayed for an indefinite time," reported the paper, quoting a well-placed
Turkish official.
The war games decision came as a major shock to Israel's strategic planners.
"This is a seriously worrying development," said former Israeli air force chief
Eytan Ben-Eliyahu on Israeli Public Television. "Turkey is critically essential in
the training of our air force over wide spaces, particularly given Turkey's
strategic location adjacent to both Iran and Syria."
Two years ago, Israeli bombers are believed to have passed through Turkish
air space when they attacked a Syrian nuclear facility under construction.
The two states have enjoyed very close ties on the military plane. They
regularly conducted joint naval exercises, intelligence was routinely shared,
and weapons trade consolidated following a military cooperation agreement
signed in 1996.
Israel has supplied hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment to
Turkey over the years, and has refurbished Turkish tanks and airplanes.
But over the past year, Turkey began steadily to downgrade the military
cooperation while in parallel augmenting such ties with Syria.
Israeli defence officials disclose that even before the abrupt cancelling of the
air exercise, there were already concerns about the future of arms deals and
joint efforts slated to develop specialised weapons systems.
Unofficially, government-run Israeli military industries acknowledge that the
export potential to Turkey has been decreasing month by month, with U.S.
and European, especially Italian, arms companies moving in to replace the
Israeli firms.
In wake of the initial strong, but panicky, Israeli comments on the scrapping
of the manoeuvres, a statement by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
said, "We call on Israeli officials to act with common sense in their statements
and attitudes."
The head of the strategic research centre at Istambul Bahcesehir University,
Ercan Citioglu, told the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network: "Turkey is the only
friendly country with Israel in the region. It has very good relations with Syria
and Iran. That's why Israel seeking Turkey's support for Israeli policies in the
region should be of vital importance to it."
Privately, some Israeli officials say that Israel should not take the "abrasive
shift in Ankara" lying down.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak counselled a cooler head. After a closed-door
top-flight discussion at his headquarters in Tel Aviv, Barak said: "In spite of
the ups and downs, Turkey continues to be a central factor in our region.
There is no room for getting drawn into fiery statements against them."
But, one senior Israeli official told IPS frankly, "It may be the reality has
already changed, and that the strategic ties that we thought continued to
exist with Turkey have simply ended."
At Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, a former defence minister, industry
minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Israel could not afford to take a hard line:
"We have an important and strategic set of common interests with Turkey. We
must act with the utmost sensitivity so that gloomy forecasts do not
materialise."
Re-shaping Turkey's attitude seems unlikely, though, without a significant
change in Israel's policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
The cancellation of Anatolian Eagle leaves a number of other strategic
questions unanswered, both on the bilateral and international plane, and also
within Turkey and Israel:
- What are the implications of a Turkey-Israel rift on the international effort
to stop Iran's nuclear quest?
- Does this signal a dramatic change in relations between the Turkish military
and the moderate Islamic Administration of the ruling AK party? Until this
dramatic decision the military had always carefully shielded its close ties with
Israel from being buffeted by mounting government and public anger about
the close strategic relationship.
- Will the Turkish ban on Israel prove to be the first tangible boycott by a
country allied with Israel?
- And, what effect will this have on Israel's obdurate policies with respect to
easing their unrelenting pressure on the Palestinians?
(END/2009)
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