Ankara welcomes the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, emphasizing that such a move after a long period of diplomatic freeze will have positive effects on bilateral ties.
Speaking to reporters accompanying him during a historical visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Erdoğan said: "We had positive phone conversations with the president of Israel, Mr. Herzog, on various occasions. He is expected to visit our country in March. Of course, we welcome this visit. Hopefully, taking such a step after a long hiatus will be good for Turkey-Israel relations."
Herzog is expected to be in Turkey in early March for a rare trip following years of frayed ties between the two countries.
Meanwhile, a senior official delegation from Turkey is visiting Israel as part of preparations for the president's upcoming visit on Wednesday.
Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın and Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal are traveling to Israel and Palestine. The two officials will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli officials to discuss the visit of Herzog to Turkey.
The visit to Ramallah comes as Turkey is on a path toward normalizing ties with Israel and after Ankara had stated it may mediate between Israel and Palestine.
After that, the Turkish delegation headed by Kalın and Önal will also hold political consultations in Israel. According to Yeni Şafak daily, during their visit to Israel, the delegation will meet with Alon Ushpiz, director-general of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Eyal Shviki, director-general of the Israeli Presidential Office, as well as senior officials from the Israeli Presidency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Relations between Turkey and Israel hit a low in 2010 following an Israeli naval raid on a Turkish aid ship, the Mavi Marmara, en route to deliver humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. The raid killed 10 activists.
The event caused an unprecedented crisis in Turkish-Israeli relations that had been peaceful for decades. Both countries even recalled their diplomatic envoys following the incident.
In 2013, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey and the payment of $20 million (about TL 38 million at the time) in compensation to the Mavi Marmara victims, Turkish-Israeli relations entered a period of normalization.
In December 2016, both countries reappointed ambassadors as part of the reconciliation deal and reiterated several times the necessity to further improve bilateral relations.
The two countries once again expelled each other's ambassadors in 2018 after another bitter falling out, and relations have since remained tense. In recent months, however, the two countries have been working on a rapprochement with Erdoğan, a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, holding telephone talks with his Israeli counterpart and other Israeli leaders.
The president had thanked Herzog for calling him to wish him a speedy recovery after testing positive for COVID-19.
Erdoğan said last month that Herzog’s visit could open a new chapter in relations between Turkey and Israel and that he was “ready to take steps in Israel’s direction in all areas, including natural gas.”
Mentioning that a fresh dialogue has started with the new government in Israel, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also last week stated that the new Israeli foreign minister, who is also the head of the party with the most seats in Parliament, said that he believes in a two-state solution.
Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın also recently said there was a “positive approach” from Israel since the formation of their new government, while Bennett told reporters “things are happening very slowly and gradually” when asked about the possible visit to Turkey.
Despite the recent rapprochement, Turkish officials continue to criticize Israel’s policies targeting Palestinians, including the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Turkish citizens have also been complaining about Israel’s arbitrary restrictions on visits. However, Israel's informal policy of deportation, visa rejection, arbitrary detention and the delay of Turkish nationals for no reason at airports has failed to discourage hundreds of visitors each year.
Known for its unbreakable solidarity with the Palestinians, Turkey has been voicing support for the Palestinian cause in the international realm for decades. Turkish authorities emphasize that the only way to achieve lasting peace and stability in the Middle East is through a fair and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian issue within the framework of international law and United Nations resolutions.
Turkey has frequently underlined that normalization with Israel will not be at the cost of Palestine.
Most recently, Çavuşoğlu said last week that Turkey normalizing relations with Israel would not mean a change in Ankara’s Palestine policy.
Speaking to public broadcaster TRT Haber, Çavuşoğlu drew attention to comments he made earlier that Turkey will not turn its back on its commitment to a Palestinian state in order to broker closer ties with Israel.
“Normalizing our relations with Israel does not mean giving up on fundamental issues such as the Jerusalem cause and the Palestinian cause,” Çavuşoğlu said.
“We will not normalize our relations at the expense of the Palestinian cause. Israel knows this very well. Can we now say ‘yes’ to the occupation and destruction of Palestinian homes there? No, our policy on this issue is very clear. As a country that has contact with both sides on the path to a two-state solution, we can contribute as we did in the past.”
“Any step we take with Israel regarding our relations, any normalization, will not be at the expense of the Palestinian cause, like some other countries,” Çavuşoğlu earlier told reporters in Ankara, referring to the rapprochement between Israel and some Gulf countries that has angered Turkey.
Gulf states that have established ties with Israel have sought to reassure Palestinians that their countries are not abandoning the quest for statehood, despite Palestinian leaders having decried the deals as a betrayal of their cause.
As The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday, Israel did not condition improved relations with Turkey on the latter no longer harboring Hamas, a senior diplomatic source said overnight Tuesday.
“We didn’t set a condition,” the source said. “Certainly, in a very careful process of growing closer, there are gestures here and there.”
Turkey is engaged in an effort to mend its frayed ties with regional powers, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Erdoğan had reiterated that Turkey hopes to maximize its cooperation with Egypt and Gulf nations “on a win-win basis,” at a time when Ankara intensified diplomacy to mend its fraught ties with Cairo and some Gulf Arab nations after years of tensions.
After years of looking abroad for answers, countries in the Middle East now appear to instead be talking to each other to find solutions following two decades defined by war and political upheaval.
The diplomatic maneuvering signals a growing realization across the region that America’s interest is moving elsewhere and that now is the time for negotiations that were unthinkable just a year ago.
The American withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq have played a part in the change in the region. Once ostracized autocrats such as Bashar Assad in Syria and shunned former top figures such as Moammar Gadhafi’s son in Libya are back in the political arena amid the still-smoldering ruins of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.
Much remains unsettled and this inward search may not provide the answers many are searching for.
The United States still maintains a strong military presence, including bases across the wider Mideast. But its allies also watched in stunned horror as desperate people clung to the sides of departing U.S. military cargo jets during America's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the Taliban takeover of the country.
And with the border-locking chaos of the coronavirus pandemic largely behind them, Mideast leaders are now shuffling, talking face-to-face amid a flurry of diplomatic meetings, seemingly eager to hedge their bets.
An intra-Gulf feud that saw Qatar boycotted for years by four Arab countries ended in January at Al-Ula.
The closing of ranks also brought a return of realpolitik to the region, a decade after the Arab Spring movements that aimed to topple the region's autocrats.
This new Mideast reassessment, however, appears to have limits on what it can resolve.
The Mideast hasn't rushed to embrace Taliban rule in Afghanistan and international recognition is still far off. Turkey has argued that engagement with the Taliban administration is vital for the humanitarian situation in the country. The grinding civil war rages on in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition battles Iranian-backed rebels. In Lebanon, the Iran-Saudi rivalry threatens to tear the country apart even more, and this rivalry extends to the Eastern Mediterranean.
But the talking, for now, continues. And absent of a major crisis that could draw America in again, those conversations likely will be where the deals get done.
After this stage, both the U.S. withdrawing attention from the region and the acceptance of the current situation by influential regional players such as Turkey, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel has led to a return to the pre-2011 Middle East landscape, which we can call the "old Middle East" despite all the destruction caused.
It became apparent that the wars that had been going on for more than 10 years in the Middle East could not come to a conclusion and that the parties could not achieve a result in their favor, and that the situation had come to a dead end. A consolidation was achieved, although it left significant damage along ethnic, religious and sectarian fault lines.
