US Secretary of State John Kerry called his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, last week, asking for help in restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Hurriyet daily reported on Saturday.Tom WC emailed me about this, noting that relations between Israel and Turkey had been deteriorating way before the Mavi Marmara incident.
Turkey turned down the request citing bad relations between Ankara and Jerusalem and saying the responsibility to fix the murky relations between the two countries falls on Israel.
Relations between Jerusalem and what was once its only Muslim ally crumbled after Israel Navy commandos raided the Mavi Marmara ship in May 2010 to enforce a blockade of the Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks on board after they attacked the commandos.
His example was this story from October 2009:
Israel's foreign minister has ordered Turkey's ambassador to be summoned over a Turkish TV series that portrays Israeli soldiers killing children.There were other signs that Turkey was straining relations with Israel before the flotilla. A November 2009 Wikileaks cable said:
Avigdor Lieberman said the programme, whose first episode was broadcast on Tuesday, incited hatred against Israel.
In one clip screened on Israeli news channels, an Israeli soldier takes aim at a smiling young girl and kills her.
The complaint is the latest to strain the relationship between Turkey and Israel.
The GOI [Government of Israel] raised the current direction the Government of Turkey has taken toward Syria and Iran -- and away from Israel. Israeli participants argued that Turkey has been supportive of Hamas in Gaza while pursuing a more "Islamic" direction with the goal of becoming a regional superpower. The GOI argued that the Turkish military is losing its ability to influence government decisions and strategic direction. After this past year, GOI participants said they have a "bad feeling" about Turkey. The GOI noted that the Israel Air Force (IAF) Commander in the past wanted to speak to the Turkish Air Force Commander, but his Turkish counterpart declined.An earlier cable from October 2009:
While the Foreign Ministry and the Turkish General Staff agree with us that a strong Turkey-Israel relationship is essential for regional stability, PM Erdogan has sought to shore up his domestic right political flank at the expense of this relationship. His outburst at Davos was the first in a series of events the results of which we and his staff have sought to contain. The latest of these was Exercise Anatolian Eagle. Erdogan canceled Israel's participation hours before the exercise was to begin. With an Israeli strike - across Turkish airspace - against targets in Iran a possibility, Erdogan decided he could not afford the political risk of being accused of training the forces which would carry out such a raid. Through some remarkable work with Allies and with the inter-agency, we engineered a public "postponement" of the international portion of the exercise, but the relationship has begun to sour.A Stratfor Wikileak confirms this as well:
Turkey planned on downgrading relations with Israel even before the May 2010 flotilla incident, documents published Wednesday by WikiLeaks suggest.The Mavi Marmara isn't the reason that Turkey is anti-Israel - it is the excuse.
A leaked email from George Friedman, the head of US-based global security analysis company Stratfor, reveals that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger that at some point he would burn bridges with Israel in favor of a closer relationship with the Islamic world.
According to the Turkish newspaper Sunday Zaman, Friedman also wrote in the same email that Turkey does not get along with Israel and the United States. An attack by Israel on Iran would provide a good opportunity for Erdogan to finally cut Turkey’s ties with Israel and the US and to expand Turkey’s power, he further wrote.
The flotilla to Gaza — in which nine Turkish citizens aboard a ship heading to Gaza were killed after attacking the IDF commandos who intercepted it – was not the cause of Turkey’s new strategy but rather the opportunity Erdogan had been waiting for, Army Radio said.