Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavusoglu (right) and his Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid (Prime Minister since July 1) at a press conference in Ankara June 23, 2022. OZAN KOSE / AFP
Putting an end to their disagreements, Turkey and Israel announced the full restoration of diplomatic ties on Wednesday, August 17. “Improved ties will help deepen ties between the two peoples, expand economic, trade and cultural ties and strengthen regional stability,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement issued after the phone call with the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was released.
In fact, the rapprochement had been going on for a little over a year. Ankara used the rise to power of a new coalition in Israel in June 2021 to soften the tone against the Jewish state.
Stormy reports
The first concrete act of this rapprochement was the state visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Ankara in March, which was unprecedented at this level in fourteen years. In May, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavusoglu was welcomed to Israel, and in June his then-ministerial counterpart Yair Lapid visited Ankara to thank the Turks for their cooperation, which he said had to thwart planned Iranian attacks on Israeli tourists in Istanbul.
This resumption of relations marks the ultimate turn in the stormy relations between Israel and Turkey in recent years. Once a Muslim flagship of the Jewish state in the region, Ankara first severed ties with Tel Aviv after the 2010 Israeli attack on the Turkish humanitarian ship Mavi-Marmara, which was trying to break the Israeli blockade in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave break through and in which ten Turkish activists were killed.
Organized by IHH, an Islamic NGO close to the Islamic conservative government, the humanitarian action was supported by the highest levels of the Turkish state. The following year, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador.
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The apology by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in 2013 will not change that. In 2016, the two countries finally reached an agreement: Turkey dropped the court case against the responsible Israeli soldiers and the Jewish state paid Ankara $20 million (€19.7 million).
The reconciliation was short-lived. In May 2018, during the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which marks the United States’ recognition of the illegal annexation of the Palestinian part of the city by the Jewish state by the Jewish state, the Israeli army kills more than fifty Gaza residents during a protest rally.
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