As ties warm between Isreal and Türkiye, Israeli President Isaac Herzog invited President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to pay a visit to his country on Wednesday.
Herzog was speaking as he received Türkiye's newly appointed ambassador, Şakir Özkan Torunlar, who presented his credentials to the president.
Last year, Herzog, whose role is mainly ceremonial, was the first Israeli leader to visit Turkey since 2008, after the two countries began restoring relations and ending a more than a decade-old diplomatic rift.
They agreed to mutually appoint ambassadors in August and after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won an election in November, he and Erdoğan agreed to keep improving ties. "I am sure we will all work to strengthen the countries' relations," Herzog said.
Netanyahu's return to power at the head of a nationalist-religious government in December has rattled Palestinians and Western and Arab allies who fear it could heighten tensions in the Middle East. Türkiye last week joined a chorus of condemnation of a visit by Israel's new far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to the sensitive Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in East Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site and Judaism's most sacred.
The countries withdrew their respective ambassadors in 2010 after Israeli forces stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for the Palestinians that broke an Israeli blockade.
The incident resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists. Relations broke down again in 2018 when Türkiye, angered by the United States moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, once more recalled its ambassador, prompting Israel to respond in kind. The two countries have not reappointed their ambassadors for a long time before Irit Lillian presented her credential to Erdoğan as the new ambassador of Israel in December.
