Turkey’s Tayyip Talks Tension-free Times, Tighter Ties to Tel Aviv 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan struck a surprisingly cordial tone over the weekend when discussing his country’s relations with Israel, telling reporters he would like to strengthen ties with the Jewish state and return the fraught relationship back to its sunnier days. “If there were no issues at the top level [in Israel], our ties could have been very different,” Erdogan lamented. He was  alluding to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with whom the Turkish leader has in recent years had extremely hostile exchanges. Once close allies, the two Middle Eastern powerhouses for the past decade have become bitter foes, with official ambassadorial ties cut off in 2010 and again in 2018 after a two-year lull. Erdogan has blamed the falling out on Israel’s Palestinian policy, and on Friday reiterated his stance that Jerusalem’s refusal to award statehood to the nearly 5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza was “unacceptable.” Netanyahu, meanwhile, has called Ankara’s premier a “dictator… who commits genocide against the Kurds and occupies Northern Cyprus.” Erdogan’s surprisingly warm words follow last week’s arrival of the new Turkish ambassador in Tel Aviv, a sign Ankara may be rethinking its foreign policy after the developments of the last few months in the region.