Late Monday, the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry released a mysterious statement: “From the Foreign Ministry Director General Dr. Dore Gold: Israel has always aspired to stable relations with Turkey and constantly is constantly assessing the avenues to achieve this goal.”
It began to make more sense when a subsequent announcement issued by another public voice, the Government Press Office published a press release announcing the meetings, scheduled for Wednesday, January 27th, 2016, between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several of his ministers with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and several of his ministers “for talks centering on bilateral cooperation in – inter alia – defense, energy, tourism and innovation.”
At the same time, Israel announced a tripartite summit for the following day in Nicosia, Cyprus, between Netanyahu, Tsipras and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.
In the Mediterranean basin, this is akin to a new cool kids’ table shunning the former cool kid (in this case, Turkey.)
For years, Greece and Israel had the worst of regional relations, with automatic Hellenic support for Palestinian petitions and Israeli anger at the regular flare-ups of Greek antisemitism. Under Tsipras, who assumed power in Greece this year with the mandate of repairing its collapsing economy, anti-Israel sentiment has waned and the benefits of linking arms with the regions Start-Up Nation have been brought to the fore.
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The improvement of ties is remarkable given that Tsipras visited Jerusalem for bilateral talks [2] as recently as November 25th, 2015.
Turkey is a regional colossus and the only Islamic state with which Israel has enjoyed normal diplomatic ties since its establishment, in 1948. Those ties have frayed almost to the point of unravelling since the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010, in which ten Turkish activists abroad a flotilla attempting to breech Israel’s blockade on Gaza were killed when the Israeli army raided the ship.
So Israel, it appears, is looking for new friends. “The differences in the relative importance of Turkey versus Greece and Cyprus notwithstanding, Israel clearly sees Greece and Cyprus as greatly balancing the damage caused by the ongoing depreciation of its relations with Ankara,” Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador and deputy director general of Foreign Ministry, in a paper entitled Active Israeli Policy in the Mediterranean Basin. “Nevertheless,” he continued, “it is important that Israel not abandon the effort to repair relations with Turkey.”
Trying to play catch-up while speaking to reporters on a flight home from Turkmenistan, Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that “the entire region would benefit from normalization of ties” between Israel and Turkey.
“So much in the region could benefit from a process of normalization ,” he said, adding, “we have set three conditions: an apology – made; compensation – that has not happened, and ending the blockade on the Palestinians. If the issue of compensation and the closure will be resolved, we will enter a process of normalization.”
Erdogan was making reference to an apology and an agreement for reparations made in March, 2013, at the behest of US President Barack Obama, who was then visiting Israel.
Almost immediately, a senior Israeli official rejected the approach, saying “we have nothing to talk about so long as he continues to set these conditions. Its impossible.”
Netanyahu rival and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that “normalization with Turkey would be viewed negatively by #Russia, #Greece & #Cyprus.”