After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly stated last week that he wants to improve relations with Israel, the Israeli government decided to launch a discreet campaign for Turkey to determine whether its intentions are sincere, two Israeli officials told me.
Why it matters: Relations between Israel and Turkey, formerly close allies, began to deteriorate in 2008 and entered a state of continuous crisis. In 2018, Turkey downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel following the unrest around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Driving the news: In recent weeks, Turkey has been sending mixed signals to Israel through the press or third parties, like the president of Azerbaijan, as Axios first reported.
- Last Friday, Erdoğan told reporters that Turkey maintains relations with Israel through intelligence channels and emphasized: “We have some difficulties with the people at the top.”
- The Turkish president said that his country cannot accept Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, but added: “Our heart wishes that we can take our relations with them to a better point.”
- The Israeli government is not sure how to interpret the signals from Turkey, but Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi decided to hold a meeting on the subject after Erdoğan’s comments.
- The meeting, which took place on Wednesday at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was also attended by senior officials from the prime minister’s office, the Ministry of Defense and Mossad.
What is the next: Israeli officials informed about the meeting told me that Ashkenazi said to start sending “silent antennas” to the Turks through various channels, in order to assess how serious Erdoğan really is about improving relations with Israel.
- The authorities said Israel will not make any formal public reactions to Erdoğan’s statements and will try to involve the Turkish government in particular.
- The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment.
The big picture: Israeli officials believe Erdogan’s new tone is directly related to the next inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
- Erdogan is concerned that Biden – who called the Turkish leader “an autocrat” – will take a tough stance with Turkey and that warming relations with Israel could score points for him with the new US president.
- Israeli officials say they will be very cautious, given their suspicions about Erdoğan’s true intentions. In any case, Israel will not damage its relations with Greece and Cyprus to repair relations with Turkey.
Flashback: Israeli-Turkish relations have been deteriorating since the 2008 war in Gaza. Contacts were frozen almost entirely after the “Gaza Flotilla incident” in 2010, in which Israeli commandos attacked activists who were trying to break an Israeli blockade to deliver aid to Gaza.
- Then President Barack Obama facilitated a trilateral call with Netanyahu and Erdoğan in 2013 to try to promote a reconciliation agreement.
- These negotiations dragged on until 2016, and the eventual agreement fell apart two years later, when a new crisis emerged on the Temple Mount.