The Turks have consistently failed to realize how deeply Israel is affected by Ankara’s protection of Hamas leaders, including providing them with Turkish citizenship and passports for travel. Turkey’s position on Hamas has always been a key concern for Israel. “Turkey refuses Israel’s request to deport Hamas terrorists,” by Kristina Jovanovski, The Media Line, November 13, 2022:
Özkizilcik [a Turkish analyst] says he does not believe the issue will have a major effect on relations between Turkey and Israel.
Instead, he believes the change in government in Israel – which will see Netanyahu returning to office, and the upcoming election in Turkey would have much more of an impact on ties.
No, the Ankara-based analyst Omer Özkizilcik is wrong. Like so many other Turks, he fails to appreciate that Turkey’s favoring Hamas will have a “major effect” on relations with Israel. Netanyahu won’t cut off relations with Turkey, but Erdogan should expect no further improvement in ties to the Jewish state until Turkey asks the Hamas members to leave, stripping them of their Turkish citizenship and having them hand in their passports just before they depart. It can all be done very quietly.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had a tense relationship with Netanyahu, with both leaders exchanging insults over the years.
In 2018, Erdogan stated that the killing of dozens of Palestinian protesters by Israeli forces was genocide.
Afterward, Netanyahu tweeted: “Erdogan is among Hamas’ biggest supporters and there is no doubt that he well understands terrorism and slaughter. I suggest that he not preach morality to us.”
Erdogan responded by tweeting that the Israeli prime minister heads an “apartheid state.”
The Turkish-Israeli rapprochement [and] normalization of relations is not based on anything regarding the Palestinians and Palestinian parties, but more on geopolitical realities and energy and economic realities,” Özkizilcik said. “It’s a common-interest approach.”
What Özkizilcik fails to realize is that if this “rapprochement” is to go any further – Turkey needs it, for economic reasons, far more than Israel — the Turks will have to give up their support of Hamas. Israel doesn’t need closer economic ties with Turkey nearly as much as Turkey does. Israel’s main interest at this point is to offer economic benefits – in trade, technology, tourism – as long as Ankara meets Israel’s only, quite understandable, quite modest, request: the cutting of.Turkish ties to Hamas, a group that wishes to remove Israel from the face of the earth. Is that Israeli wish so hard for the Turks to understand?
Gabriel Mitchell, director of undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame at Tantur in Jerusalem, told The Media Line he believes the foreign minister’s statement on Hamas was an attempt to draw Netanyahu into negotiations to continue the rapprochement.
“I see this as a way for Erdogan to say there’s a bigger prize available if Netanyahu is willing to meet in the middle and so I think that essentially the normalization negotiations are effectively back on,” he said.
For Netanyahu, “meeting in the middle” does not include tolerating Turkey’s protection of, and support for, Hamas. Whatever the economic benefits that may emerge from closer Israeli relations with Turkey – and most of those benefits will be on the Turkish side of the ledger – Netanyahu is not one to overlook Ankara’s continuing ties to Hamas. He’s no Lapid or Herzog, eager to please. He will keep relations with Turkey frozen. Is that what Erdogan wants? At some point, if Erdogan wants that trade, technology transfer, and even more tourist dollars from Israel, he will have to show those Hamas leaders the door.
Mitchell says that the fact that members of Hamas are living in Turkey is one of the biggest obstacles in restoring full relations, and believes if Netanyahu had been prime minister an agreement on diplomatic ties would not have been made without Ankara taking concrete steps against Hamas.
“I certainly saw that as Israel kind of backing down on a core principle,” Mitchell said.
That “core principle” will promptly be restored by Netanyahu when he makes clear to Erdgoan that until Hamas is out of Turkey, no further progress on economic ties will be possible.
“Turkey understands that a Netanyahu government is not going to be as eager to fully restore or move on a path to normalization than the previous government,” he added.
Netanyahu will not continue to “back down” on that “core principle” of fighting terrorists, but instead will demand that if Erdogan wants good relations with Israel, rather than just an exchange of ambassadors, he’ll have to expel Hamas from Turkey forthwith.
The thawing of ties with Israel is part of a broader attempt by Erdogan to improve relations with countries in the region and the West in the hopes of attracting foreign investment to his country, which has been struggling under a devalued currency and massive inflation that is officially reported at more than 80%..
The restoration of full diplomatic ties with Israel has been a success story amid lukewarm responses by many countries, notably the US, to the Turkish president’s overtures….
Given those “lukewarm responses” from other countries, there is all the more reason for Erdogan to cultivate economic ties with Israel, and not to spoil things by continuing to insist on supporting Hamas leaders in Turkey itself..
With Netanyahu as Prime Minister, I doubt that there is any chance of improving ties between Turkey and Israel, beyond what has so far been achieved – the exchange of ambassadors. Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett, and Isaac Herzog belong either to the left (Herzog) or to the center-left (Lapid) or to the center-right (Bennett). They have been willing to overlook Erdogan’s support for Hamas. But Netanyahu is made of sterner stuff. He has spent decades fighting terrorists, beginning with his service in the Sayeret Matkal; he took part in the capture of terrorists who had seized control of a Sabena airplane. His brother Jonathan was killed while rescuing hostages from Arab terrorists at Entebbe on July 4, 1976. Netanyahu has not forgiven Erdogan for the Mavi Marmara episode. He’ll make clear to Erdogan, the Padishah sitting in his 1,500 room Ak Saray (White Palace), that: “Much as I believe that both of our countries would profit from closer economic ties, there can be no further improvement in relations until the Turkish government ceases to provide succour – citizenship, passports, refuge — to leaders of the terrorist group Hamas.”
The ball will then be in Erdogan’s court. The choice is stark: the prospect of better ties with Israel that will greatly improve the Turkish economy, or enduring a freezing of those ties, in order to continue support for the Arab terrorists of Hamas. Which does Erdogan think the people of Turkey would prefer?
BTeboe says
Erdogan wants to be Caliph so my guess is that he will align with Hamas while lying to Israel. Good old Sharia law.
John ..Smith says
Erdogan is a hardcore jihadi who harbours ambitions to destroy Israel, and Netanyahu knows this. Even though his true allegiance lies with Hamas, he wouldn’t think twice of turning over those Hamas members to Israel if he thought he could benefit from it.
VictorMc says
…….and there was you, thinking of going to this dreadful dump called Turkiye for a sunshine holiday.
ErDOGan has spent a fortune on advertising his awful country even to the extent of renaming it the Eastern Mediterranean or some such nonsense. Don’t be fooled, it’s the same decent people led by the usual extremist Muslims.