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  • Why Israel and Turkey Got Back Together

    Why Israel and Turkey Got Back Together

    The Coming Cooperation on Syria and Energy

    Michael J. Koplow
    March 23, 2013

    Exploratory drilling near the coasts of Cyprus, Egypt, Israel,
    Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey has unearthed vast reserves of natural gas.
    Competition over the rights to tap those resources is compounding
    existing tensions over sovereignty and maritime borders. The eastern
    Mediterranean is quickly becoming as volatile as its eastern cousin,
    the South China Sea.

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Umit Bektas / Courtesy Reuters)

    After nearly three years of intense political feuding following the
    Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara -- a ship carrying international
    activists who were trying to break Israel's blockade on Gaza -- Turkey
    and Israel agreed yesterday to resume diplomatic ties. In a phone call
    with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Israeli Prime
    Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the deaths of nine Turkish
    citizens at the hands of Israeli forces and agreed to pay
    compensation. In return, Erdogan agreed to normalize relations between
    the two countries and to drop the prosecutions of Israeli officers in
    connection with the flotilla raid. Turkey had previously demanded
    that, in addition to apologizing and paying compensation, Israel lift
    the blockade. In order to get around this last -- and thorniest --
    condition, Netanyahu stressed that Israel has recently eased
    restrictions on civilian goods coming into Gaza, and he agreed to work
    with Turkey on improving the humanitarian situation there. The details
    of the arrangement still need to be worked out, but it appears that
    the two countries are well on their way to resuming cooperation in a
    number of areas.

    It has been clear for some time that Israel was willing to make an
    apology to Turkey, but less clear whether Turkey would accept it. Now
    that election season is over in Israel, Netanyahu no longer has to
    worry about nationalist criticism over repairing ties with Turkey, and
    the temporary exclusion of former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
    from the cabinet removed the biggest obstacle to reconciliation on the
    Israeli side. But the politics in Turkey are a different story. The
    Palestinian issue has made Israel deeply unpopular there, and the feud
    has been politically valuable for Erdogan, who has been able to blast
    Israel any time he has wanted to divert attention away from sensitive
    domestic issues. Last month, for example, Turkish headlines were
    dominated by the government's negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, the
    leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). When Erdogan
    publically called Zionism a crime against humanity, he chased the
    talks right off the front pages.

    Given these domestic political benefits, Ankara has had little reason
    to reconcile with Israel until now. This week's news, however, signals
    that Turkey has finally come to realize that it has more to lose than
    to gain from turning a cold shoulder to Israel. This is largely
    because Turkey can use Israel's help on its most pressing foreign
    policy dilemma, the Syrian civil war, and on its top economic concern,
    energy security.

    Sometimes, a reliable friend is better than a reliable adversary.

    For Ankara, the Syrian crisis has been a major headache. Turkey has
    suffered a loss in trade, been forced to rely on NATO for Patriot
    missiles to defend against border threats, and accepted just under
    half a million Syrian refugees. Ankara's demands for Assad to step
    down have fallen on deaf ears, and its requests for NATO intervention
    in the form of a no-fly zone and heavy arms for the Syrian rebels have
    also been brushed aside.

    All this has been unfortunate for Turkey's leaders, but it was the
    recent introduction of Syrian chemical weapons into the equation that
    really changed Turkey's calculus; now more than ever, the country
    needs better intelligence and allies to bring an end to the civil war
    or at least prevent it from spilling over. Turkey cannot afford to
    have chemical weapons used anywhere near its border with Syria, and
    the longer the fighting goes on, the greater the chances of a chemical
    weapons strike gone awry. Israel simply has better intelligence on
    regional developments than Turkey does, and Turkey can use that help
    to monitor Assad's weapons stores and troop movements on both sides.
    In addition, whereas the United States and other NATO countries have
    been reluctant to support the Syrian rebels in any meaningful way,
    Israel has a greater incentive to make sure that the moderate Sunni
    groups prevail over the more radical jihadist elements of the
    opposition. As the situation in Syria heats up, Turkey and Israel will
    be thankful that they can talk to each other and coordinate.

    Another area in which Turkey needs Israel's assistance is energy.
    Turkey's current account deficit, which stood at $48.8 billion in
    2012, is almost entirely a result of the country's reliance on oil and
    natural gas imports; Turkey has no natural resources of its own.
    Furthermore, Turkey is paying through the nose for both Russian and
    Iranian natural gas, due to onerous price contracts. Earlier this
    month, I talked with a number of people in Turkey -- government
    ministers, opposition politicians, business tycoons, and trade group
    leaders -- and they all mentioned Turkey's growing energy needs and
    lamented the country's overreliance on Russian and Iranian natural
    gas. Israel, meanwhile, has just discovered two major natural gas
    basins, the Tamar and Leviathan fields, off its coast in the Eastern
    Mediterranean. Since Turkey has no hope of smoothing over ties with
    Cyprus, its longtime adversary, which has been the other main
    beneficiary of the Mediterranean gas boom, it will likely turn to
    Israel as a natural gas supplier. With Turkey's economic growth
    slowing, Israel's potential as a partner makes reconciliation more
    attractive now than at any point in recent years.

    Other factors also made this week the ideal timing for Turkey to
    accept an Israeli apology. For starters, doing so during President
    Barack Obama's trip to the region allowed Erdogan to hand the
    president a political victory. At the same time, Erdogan gets to claim
    that he brought Israel to its knees just as Turkish nationalists were
    gearing up to criticize him over negotiating with Ocalan and taking a
    softer line with the Turkish Kurds. A significant segment of the
    Turkish population still denies that there is a Kurdish problem and
    sees any government effort toward easing tensions as capitulating to
    terrorists. Following Ocalan's speech on Thursday, which signaled a
    genuine break from the past by transforming the PKK's fight against
    Turkey into a political struggle rather than an armed struggle,
    Erdogan now has both the political space to resume ties with Israel
    and the ability to spin the rapprochement with Israel as a nationalist
    victory in which Israel has ceded to Turkish demands.

    Squabbling with Israel had its benefits for Erdogan, but with so many
    challenges facing Turkey, and with Obama pressuring both sides to make
    up, the time was finally right to do so. For the first time since the
    Mavi Marmara set sail, the economic and foreign policy gains that
    Turkey will realize by patching things up with Israel far outweigh the
    domestic political benefits of staying apart. Sometimes, a reliable
    friend is better than a reliable adversary.

    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139076/michael-j-koplow/why-israel-and-turkey-got-back-together?page=show


    From: Baghdasarian
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