Israel and Turkey

I am growing increasingly furious with Netanyahu. If he is an example of a “hawk” and a "hard liner" as he is often referred to in the west, then Israel is in serious trouble if this is the toughest leader they can get. I don’t know why he feels the need to grovel to Turkey. What does Israel need from that country? Israel needs to come to terms with the fact that Turkey is as much an enemy as Iran and Syria, hamas and hezbollah and that there are no friendships to be had with muslim countries.

Israel bends to Turkish ultimatum, Ankara prepares next blow


DEBKAfile

Israel-Turkish relations dropped to another low Wednesday, Jan. 13, when Jerusalem was forced to send a letter of apology to Ankara Wednesday, Jan. 13, by Turkey’s president Abdullah Gul’s threat to recall the Turkish ambassador from Jerusalem. Turkish prime minister Tayyep Recip Erdogan, buoyed up by is power to force Jerusalem to bend, is reported by DEBKAfile’s sources to be planning to intensify his campaign for grinding down the Jewish state, playing to the radical galleries in Tehran, Damascus, Gaza and Beirut. He is targeting Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak for a share in the ignominy.

The crisis in Turkish-Israeli relations was only temporarily defused late Wednesday when prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu forced deputy foreign minister to write a letter of apology to Ankara according to a script virtually dictated by the Turkish president on pain of the recall of the Turkish ambassador the next day.

Most of the day, foreign minister Lieberman and Ayalon refused to add to the half-hearted regrets they voiced earlier over the incident Tuesday, in which Lieberman and Ayalon, who saw red over the Turkish prime minister’s constant abuse, summoned the Turkish ambassador for a dressing-down.

Their foolish maneuver for putting Ankara in its place was to seat the ambassador on a sofa lower than his Israel hosts and calling TV cameras to witness his disgrace.

Ankara hit the ceiling, blowing the incident up into a major row. Netanyahu, rather than fire the foreign minister and/or his deputy for pointlessly fueling the crisis, exposed his weakness to outside pressure and succumbed to Gul’s ultimatum. Not only Turkey, but its new allies, Syria, Iran, Hizballah and Hamas, watched every move and drew their own conclusions.

The aftershocks rocked other parts of the Middle East: President Mubarak found himself wondering how to respond to Saudi King Abdullah’s effort to bring him over to Riyadh Thursday, Jan. 14 for a fence-mending encounter with Syria’s Bashar Assad. By folding under Turkish pressure, Israel strengthened the hand of Erdogan’s partner, the Syrian ruler, which meant that Mubarak would have to run an extra mile to settle his quarrel with Assad and oblige the king. This was more than he had intended.

In other words, by kowtowing to Ankara, the Israeli prime minister effectively pulled the rug from under the moderate Arab Middle East bloc and awarded points to the radical Turkish-Iran-Syrian coalition; the corollary is a stronger hand for the extremist Hamas against the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority.

A high-ranking Turkish official confided to DEBKAfile at the end of the day: “I didn’t know you Israelis were so stupid. You’ve made Erdogan’s sweetest dream come true.

Read the rest See also Freund: “Ayalon has nothing to apologize for”