Israel and Turkey have reached a preliminary agreement to normalize relations at a meeting between senior Israeli and Turkish officials in Switzerland on Thursday. The long awaited agreement between the two countries entails a significant $20 million compensation for the families of victims of the Mavi Marmara incident, a restoration of full diplomatic ties between the countries and a guarantee by the Turkish government to not prosecute Israelis involved in the Mavi Marmara flotilla attack as well as an easing of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Diplomatic sources expect that the Turkish and Israeli prime ministers will seal the deal before than end of this year and exchanges of the return of ambassadors to Tel Aviv and Ankara will take place immediately afterward. The diplomatic crisis dates back to a May 2010 incident when an Israeli special operations team boarded the Mavi Marmara, a civilian vessel carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip in defiance of Israel's blockade, in international waters. The raid of the flotilla resulted in the death of nine civilians, an American and eight Turkish citizens. Following the attack, the Israeli government faced international condemnation and bilateral relations declined to a historic low.Turkish government officials demanded an official apology for the incident and compensation for the victims' families as well as an easing of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip in order to restore ties. The Israeli government took the first step toward reconciliation on March 24, 2013, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the mishandling of the raid during a conference call with then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Barack Obama. Since then closed-door reconciliation talks continued, but the agreement has been delayed due to perpetual local, general, presidential and early elections in Turkey and Israel's attack on Gaza in 2014.Turkey has had bilateral ties with Israel since 1949 and both countries enjoyed strategic partnership in previous years. Turkey and Israel as well as the U.S. and European countries prefer the normalization of relations. "The restoration of Turkish-Israel diplomatic relations is a major positive strategic development for everybody who cares about stability in the Middle East and for everybody who cares about effective security cooperation and energy security," Matthew Bryza, former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. State Department told Daily Sabah, adding that Turkey and Israel had an extensive strategic partnership in the 1990s and it would be great for the U.S. and NATO to have this strategic partnership restored.Dr. Michael Tanchum, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasian Energy Futures Initiative and Global Energy Center, shared similar thoughts, saying that if Turkish-Israeli relations are normalized it would help create a balance of power that would contribute to stability in the region. "We must see Turkey's engagement with Israel as part of Ankara's wider diplomatic initiative to improve its strategic position in the region," Tanchum said. Gallia Lindenstrauss, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said: "Turkish-Israeli normalization will strengthen the pro-Western forces in the region. This will give another boost to the coalition against DAESH. Also, as there will be both short- and long-term repercussions to what is happening in Syria, it is vital that Turkey and Israel have lines of communication Syria is a neighboring country of both countries."The preliminary agreement between Turkey and Israel also suggests the beginning of talks for laying a natural gas pipeline from Israel to Turkey is another dimension of the cooperation. Turkey's relations deteriorated with Russia, which supplies Turkey with the majority of its gas, after Turkey shot down a Russian jet in Turkish airspace last month, reopening the potential for Israeli gas exports. Partners of Israel's Leviathan natural gas field had held talks in past years with Turkish companies over the possibility of building an undersea pipeline to Turkey. Bryza said that energy projects are a contributory factor, but not the main determinant behind Turkish-Israel rapprochement. "Big energy projects like a pipeline of Israeli gas to Turkey can only happen when the political leaders of the countries decides to have normal relations and cooperate. Before that, energy projects can't force cooperation. Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Erdoğan decided that now is time to restore relations. Thereafter, energy projects can turn the nice words into tangible cooperation," Bryza said.Tanchum from Atlantic Council emphasized that securing Turkey's natural gas supply by diversifying the number of suppliers is a strategic imperative for Ankara and forms a significant component of its diplomatic initiative. "Turkey's thaw in relations with Israel should be viewed as part of a wider strategy that Ankara has been pursuing with several actors in the region," he added. "It's like a dance between politics and energy. Politics steps forward, and then energy, and then politics again, and then energy again moves forward," Bryza said to describe the relationship between energy and politics in Turkish-Israeli relations.Another main question after the normalization is whether the level of relations will reach the same level as in the 1990s. Lindenstrauss said the two countries will not be able to return to the level of trust and cooperation that they had in the 1990s, "however, due to the overwhelming number of problems there are currently in the Middle East I do believe, as President Erdoğan has stated, that more cooperative relations between Turkey and Israel will be helpful in addressing some of these problems, including the Palestinian issue." Muzaffer Şenel, the director of the Center for Modern Turkish Studies at Istanbul Şehir Üniversity said that relations will not reach the same level as previously. "Since conditions are totally changed. In Turkey strong civil single-party government in power, and the position and role of the military has already down. Turkey is more democratic than ever. Such a politically accountable government could not go further without any signs of a solution for the Palestinian issue," Şenel said.