3 September 2011, Journal of Turkish Weekly (JTW) http://www.turkishweekly.net (Turkey)
By Murat Yetkin
I was talking on the phone with a high-ranking Turkish official as CNN Türk’s breaking-news story started to present the Israeli government’s reaction to the Turkish government’s ultimatum regarding the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair. According to the news, the Israeli government was sorry that its soldiers killed nine Turks who were among the members of a group carrying aid to Palestinians in Gaza under Israeli blockade in May 2010, but would not apologize. The Israeli government also told Turkey to be more respectful of international maritime law.
“They can go to hell,” groaned the Turkish official’s voice on the phone. “They will see what respecting international maritime law means when our Navy sails into the international waters of the Mediterranean if they do not apologize by Wednesday [Sept. 7].”
Turkish-Israeli cooperation broke down in 2009 when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israeli President Shimon Peres had their “one minute” row over Israeli operations against Palestinians that were causing the death of civilians in Gaza. Tensions were then raised with the flotilla incident.
With the efforts of the United States, the United Nations set up a commission nine months ago to look into the affair.
During this period, four secret talks (in six sessions – starting in Brussels, then in Bucharest, Geneva, New York, Rome and New York again) were carried out between top Turkish and Israeli officials to find common ground because Turkey was saying two main things: 1) An open apology and compensation to the victims’ families was needed for the normalization of relations, and 2) Israel should stop bullying in the eastern Mediterranean as if it were the dominating power there.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said yesterday – as he was announcing the ultimatum, including the downgrading of diplomatic relations, the freezing of military agreements and the challenging of Israel in international courts and in the international waters of the Mediterranean – that the two countries had come to terms four times in this nine-month period.
At one time in Geneva in December 2010, following the Turkish gesture to send firefighting planes when an awful forest fire broke out in Israel, the diplomats met in Geneva and had the full support of Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone. But the agreement never came to life as Netanyahu failed to overcome the resistance of his fringe right-wing coalition partner and foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, in the Cabinet meeting.
In the meantime, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the Israeli Army said in public that they supported an agreement with Ankara at the cost of an apology. They knew that if the report was released and included accusations that civilians had been killed (if the report found that soldiers had fired at the backs of their heads, for instance), however, that that would have international legal consequences for the Israeli soldiers.
But they could not weaken the nationalist resistance within the Israeli Cabinet.
Diplomacy between the two countries collapsed last week when Turks accused Israelis of misleading the media that it was the Turks who wanted another six months for the release of the report. Turkey challenged the U.N. and the U.S. for an immediate release. U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton asked for some more time personally from Davutoğlu to convince U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Israelis.
But the lobby who managed to provide a speech in the U.S. Congress – with the help of the American opposition when President Barack Obama was out of the U.S. for Europe – probably managed to leak the report to the New York Times to further embarrass Clinton and cause Davutoğlu to explode.
That is the point where we stand now.
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