Sunday, January 17, 2010

Cold Turkey

The Israeli relationship with Turkey has been undergoing a transitional phase for some months, fueled mostly by overt negative criticism of Israel by Turkey's PM Recip Erdogan. He is head of a pro-Islamic party, that is at odds with the traditional secular make-up of modern Turkey, and has been trying to change the status quo there. He has gone out of his way to insult Israel, he walked out of a speech that Pres. Peres was making at a meeting in Europe some months ago. He has made insulting comments about Israel, particularly in relation to Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and he has labeled Israeli soldiers as cold-blooded baby killers, etc. Now he has sanctioned the showing on state TV of a program showing the IDF as deliberately carrying out war crimes in Gaza.
In reponse, FM Lieberman decided that Israel should no longer take insults from our "friends" and so ordered his deputy, Danny Ayalon to call in the Turkish Ambassador and give him a dressing down. Ayalon did that last week, but unfortunately did so in too direct a manner. Not only did he criticize the Turkish Government, but he made the Ambassador sit on a lower sofa, and he had the Turkish flag removed from the room. Unfortunately it was these symbols of disapproval that caused insult to the Turkish Government and people, and so Ayalon had to apologize, even after he had justified his actions. It was a pity that Ayalon went too far in jettisoning diplomatic niceties, because his oral statement to the Turkish Ambassador was appropriate under the circumstances. But, since the Turks are very sensitive about their status and threatened to break off dioplomatic relations, Ayalon had to apologize, and he sent a letter to Ergodan saying so.
The pity is that the focus was taken away from the Turkish actions that caused the offense in the first place. Apparently Israel is seen as being able to take insults while Turkey is not. But, if you look at the record, Israel's actions in Gaza are a mere shadow of the war crimes that Turkey has in fact carried out in the past. Apart from the Armenian massacres that took place in 1918-22, that was the first genocide in modern times, Turkey has for years had an ongoing war with the Kurds, during which there have been many attacks on civilians, and thousands have been killed. Quite recently, Turkish armed forces attacked Kurds in nothern Iraq and carried out indiscriminate bombing of civilian locations. But, there were no demonstrations, the world doesn't care about Kurds, it only cares about Palestinians!
Now the worst scenario is that Turkey has become friendly with Syria and Iran. Whether this is in response to the cold shoulder shown to Turkey by the EU, or it is the cause of that EU hesitation, we do not know. But, what is clear that any rapprochement between Turkey and the "rejectionist" Muslim world endangers Israel's alliance with Turkey. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is on a mission to Turkey to meet with its Defence establishment, who are staunchly supportive of the secular basis of the Turkish State. What results will come out of his visit are unknown, but it seems likely that the Israeli-Turkish relationship is headed for a continued bumpy period.

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