Turkey will soon appoint a new ambassador to Israel, breaking an almost three-year freeze during which no official diplomat represented Ankara in Jerusalem and when both countries sparred repeatedly. According to several sources within President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration, the top diplomat will be Ufuk Ulutaş, a foreign ministry official who studied Hebrew and Middle East politics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The possible thaw in the frigid relationship comes on the backdrop of increasingly fraught relations between Turkey and the Western world, as the United States and European Union in recent weeks seem to have finally had enough with Ankara’s shenanigans, imposing sanctions on it for its aggressive behavior in the region. After decades of friendly ties and close cooperation on trade and security issues, Israeli and Turkish relations soured in recent years, with both Erdoğan and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu striking extremely hostile tones towards one another, mostly for domestic political reasons.
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