The Strategic Partnership between Turkey and Israel

The fact that Israel and Turkey are the USA’s main military and strategic partners in the Middle East is well known. Their pro-western and primarily pro-American stance has been and remains the chief driver bringing these states close together and prompting them to cooperate. Turkey and Israel also became natural allies and partners for historical reasons.

The fact that Israel and Turkey are the USA’s main military and strategic partners in the Middle East is well known. Their pro-western and primarily pro-American stance has been and remains the chief driver bringing these states close together and prompting them to cooperate. Turkey and Israel also became natural allies and partners for historical reasons. In the era of Europe’s military and political confrontation with the Sublime Porte the Jews, who were being oppressed and persecuted in Catholic countries, found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish authorities looked favourably on the Jewish exiles from Europe: the latter were given large tracts of land, including in Palestine, and were afforded communal autonomy and freedom of economic activity. Turkey is so far the only Islamic state where the Jews (about 20,000 people) enjoy equal political, civil, economic and cultural rights with the rest of the population. The Turkish Jews mainly belong to the most prosperous and middle-class sectors of the population. Economic prosperity prompted some Jewish families who had earlier moved to Israel to return to Turkey; at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s the number of these returnees grew, and Jewish migration from Turkey to Israel effectively ended [1].

Turkey recognised Israel in November 1949 and was the first Islamic country to establish diplomatic relations with the country. The two states signed their first trade agreement in July 1950. Before the crisis in Turkish–Israeli relations, which flared up in 2010 and remains unresolved, trade between the two countries stood at 3.5 billion dollars, and Israel was 17th in the list of exporting countries in the Turkish market, while Turkey was the sixth biggest market for Israel.

For a long time even after the Justice and Development Party came to power in Turkey in 2002 the two states’ pragmatic interest in each other enabled them to maintain a high level of cooperation, especially in the areas of economics and military-technical cooperation. The initiator of the cooling in Turkish–Israeli relations was the then prime minister and now president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In an attempt to gain prestige in the Islamic world, the supporters of Turkey’s Islamisation who had come to power gradually began to distance themselves from “Zionist education”. Erdogan ostentatiously welcomed Hamas leader Khaled Mashal as an honoured guest in Ankara, declared the possibility of normalising relations with Iran, and condemned the Israeli military’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza (27 December 2008 – 19 January 2009).

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MV Mavi Marmara

The pretext for the effective break in diplomatic relations was the incident involving the MV Mavi Marmara. The ship was part of the so-called Peace Flotilla which tried to get through to the Gaza sector, which was totally blockaded by Israel, with humanitarian cargo on board on the night of 30/31 May 2010. Following an attack by Israeli special forces the flotilla of six ships was halted in neutral waters, and nine of the pacifist movement’s activists were killed and 30 wounded. All those killed were citizens of Turkey. When Erdogan spoke in the country’s parliament the day after the incident, he stated that Israel’s actions deserved decisive condemnation and called them “an attack on humanity in violation of international laws and peace throughout the world”. The Turkish parliament decided to review relations between Turkey and Israel, to recall the Turkish ambassador from Tel Aviv, and to close Turkish airspace to Israeli non-commercial aircraft. Some defence projects were frozen, and Turkish resorts were closed to Israeli tourists.

The events of the Arab Spring confirmed that the Turkish political leadership had seen them as a favourable moment for promoting its neo-Pan-Turkic aspirations and the model of “Turkish democracy” in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, i.e. where quite recently in historical terms there were still provinces of the Ottoman Empire which were totally dependent on the power of the Istanbul sultans. Ankara intensified its promotion of Turkey’s political, economic and other interests in Central Asia and the South Caucasus [2]. Turkey was one of the first countries to recognise the post-revolutionary regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Algeria. Turkey markedly stepped up its role in the efforts to resolve the Palestinian problem in particular and issues concerning a Middle East settlement in general.

Immediately after the protest movement with standard demands for a change in political power reached Syrian territory in March 2011, Turkey got actively involved in the campaign to support the opponents of the ruling leadership in the Syrian Arab Republic. Erdogan clearly stated that “the events in Syria are turning into an internal affair for Turkey” [3]. The Free Syrian Army, which opposes the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has bases in refugee camps on Turkish territory. Instructors from the Turkish special forces recruit and train volunteers. The Turkish authorities established a total economic blockade against its southern neighbour, but the main route for armed subversive groups moving into Syria, including jihadists from IS and al-Qaeda, is via Turkey’s borders.

The continuing bloodshed in Syria is also in line with Israel’s strategic interests, since it significantly weakens the potential of its main regional opponents. In the current context Syria, once one of the leading countries of the Arab world, is effectively excluded from the process of finding a Middle East settlement, which undoubtedly helps the state of Israel to integrate the occupied Syrian Golan Heights into its own territory.

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Objectively speaking, the crisis in relations between Turkey and Israel is helpful to neither side. Turkey and Israel have far more interests and points of contact in common than they have grounds for confrontation. Israel, for example, which has made barring Iran from any developments in the field of nuclear technologies the cornerstone of its foreign policy, has an objective interest in eliminating the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Tehran’s main ally in the region.

Turkey, which is battling to establish control over the regions inhabited by the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian Kurds, has no less interest in destabilising the internal situation in Iran as well as in Syria and Iraq. A new Turkish–Israeli political alliance is being formed against the background of the “Iran syndrome”. At the official level Israel has clearly let it be known that it supports the actions of the US-led foreign coalition in Syria and wants to see Bashar al-Assad removed.

Two years ago a telephone conversation took place between the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the initiative of US president Barack Obama. Netanyahu offered an apology to the Turkish side and said, “After three years of discord in Turkish–Israeli relations I have decided it is time to rehabilitate them. The changing reality around us obliges us to constantly review our relations with other countries in the region. For the past three years Israel has made repeated attempts to achieve reconciliation with Turkey. The fact is that the Syrian crisis has become the main factor for me.” [3].

For his part, Erdogan accepted the Israeli premier’s apology and undertook to close the criminal case against the Israeli special forces personnel who took part in the raid, emphasising the “importance of close cooperation and friendship between the Turkish and Jewish peoples” [4].

The White House stated with satisfaction in its report on the results of Obama’s visit to Israel: “The United States sets a high value on our close partnership with Turkey and Israel, and we attach great importance to the restoration of positive relations between them in order to advance regional peace and security.”

In December 2015 Turkish officials confirmed that a provisional agreement had been reached with Israel at talks in Switzerland. According to the terms of the agreement, Israel is setting up a fund of 20 million dollars to pay compensation to the victims of the Israeli commandos’ attack on the Mavi Marmara, and in exchange for this Turkey is giving up any suits against Israel in connection with this case. In addition, Israel has undertaken to relax its blockade of the Gaza sector.

In the present situation the resumption of Turkish–Israeli cooperation under the auspices of the USA suits both sides. Erdogan, whose image has suffered substantially as a result of corruption scandals, persecution of the democratic opposition and the Kurdish question, his unsuccessful attempts to secure a leading position in the Muslim world and well-founded accusations of aiding terrorists in Syria, will use this reconciliation with Israel to strengthen his political position.

Israel has an interest in expanding the regional circle of states that are prepared to show it loyalty. Turkey is regarded as a very important investor in the Israeli military-industrial complex’s development programmes and also in the long-term project to develop the Leviathan gas field and build an underwater gas pipeline to take Israeli gas to Turkey.

All sides of this revived alliance involving the USA are united by the single strategic objective of holding back the advance of radical Islam towards Iran, the North Caucasus, Central Asia and beyond – in the direction of Russia’s borders.

1. Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia, Jerusalem, vol 8, p 1131.

2. “Aspects of Turkish foreign policy in relation to the post-Soviet countries”, ORSAM Report 27, November 2012, p 10.

3. “Netanyahu says Syria was main reason for apology”, Yedioth Ahronoth, 24.03.2013.

4. Turkey: Israel meeting us halfway”, MIGnews, 23.03.2013.