TURKEY-ISRAEL RAPPROCHEMENT FROM DİFFERENT ANGLES

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had announced in a statement he made recently that Israeli
President Yitzhak Herzog will come to Turkey in early February. Erdogan announced on Thursday that
the normalization calendar had changed. Holding a press conference at Esenboğa Airport before his
departure to Ukraine, Erdoğan said that this visit was planned to take place in mid-March. Regarding
the subject, Erdogan said, “This visit will take place in mid-March. With this visit, we will try to put
our bilateral relations on a very different ground for the future in a positive direction. This approach
of ours is also present on the Israeli side. Maybe it will be a preliminary study by sending our special
representative to Israel, just as their special representatives came to us before Herzok’s arrival.”.
Normalization talks between Turkey and Israel have been going on for a long time, but these talks
were conducted in secret. At this point, the talks are no longer hidden from the public.
Turkey wants to reduce its loneliness in the international arena. In this context, there are signals of
rapprochement with countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Armenia. Erdogan is also
scheduled to pay a visit to Saudi Arabia in the near future. Among the issues discussed is the thesis
that Turkey, which is currently experiencing bad economic times, needs to improve its relations with
countries close to the Western bloc in order to get rid of this situation. Finally, it should be noted
that; Turkey feels the need to get closer with Israel in order to strengthen its hand in the Eastern
Mediterranean equation.
Israel has three big expectations from a possible normalization with Turkey. The first of these is to
transport Israel’s energy resource to Europe through Turkey. At this point, Turkey is of great
importance for Israel, which wants to transport the energy source it usurped from the Palestinians to
Europe at the cheapest cost. One of Tel Aviv’s main expectations is to pull Turkey into the antiIranian bloc in the Middle East. Having strengthened this bloc by normalizing with countries such as
the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain recently, Israel wants Turkey to take its place in the
coalition. Another important goal of Israel in normalization with Turkey is to end Hamas’ presence in
Turkey. Disturbed by Hamas’ activities in Turkey, Israel places this issue at the top of the
normalization conditions with Ankara. It is wondered whether Israel, which has determined the
prevention of Hamas’ activities in Turkey as a red line, will be successful in this regard.
Turkey, economically, can see positive results of normalization with Israel in the short term.
However, it is difficult to say that rapprochement with Israel will yield positive results in the medium
and long term. In this context, it should be reminded that Israel is going through a difficult process.
Because Israel is going through one of the most turbulent periods in its history, politically and
militarily. There is a fundamental instability in Israel, which is struggling with internal turmoil in the
political arena. While it is observed that the founding generation is on the verge of extinction in
Israel, it stands as the common view of many experts that Israeli politics alarmed. On the other hand,
it is considered that Israel’s image of a “strong state”, so to speak, has suffered a great loss, which
has recently gone through a major war with the Palestinian resistance. In this context, it is thought
that the Palestinian resistance, especially Hamas, inflicted heavy blows on Israel as a result of the
operation called “The Sword of Jerusalem”. In short, a possible rapprochement with Israel, which is
going through hard times and is becoming more and more a burden to its Western allies, is not
logical pragmatically . From an idealist point of view, we should state that it is not even necessary to
say that normalization with Israel is already pointless.
There is a perception among some of the Turkish society, especially among the members of the
ruling party, that normalization with Israel will be in favor of Palestine. To understand that this
perception is wrong, it is enough to think about what Gaza went through after the last normalization
agreement with Israel. It was claimed that the normalization agreement with Israel, for which the
Mavi Marmara case was dropped, was in favor of Gaza. However, after this agreement, neither the
blockade was lifted nor the embargo eased. On the contrary, Gaza gave many martyrs and was
attacked many times. In short, what happened in the past reveals that; It seems delusional to expect
Israel to sign a deal in favor of its enemies. Although President Erdogan emphasizes developing a
“win-win” relationship with Israel, this possibility does not seem very realistic.