'Turkish president's policy towards Israel constructive, moving in right direction'

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

ANKARA (AA) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policy towards Israel is "constructive and moving in the right direction," an analyst and former US diplomat told Anadolu Agency.

"President Erdogan seems to be quite committed to normalizing relations with Israel. He's made that evident by virtue of what appears to be a very good meeting with President (Isaac) Herzog in Ankara," Matt Bryza, senior researcher at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said in an exclusive interview.

Bryza stressed that Erdogan's government managed the warming of relations "very competently and strategically" by first having Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visit Israel and then, after a pause of a couple of weeks, a visit by Energy Minister Fatih Donmez.

Those visits were "very important" as a signal that Türkiye and Erdogan want to have a normal relationship with Israel, including in the area of energy, he said.

"Overall, the policy seems to be constructive and moving in the right direction if your goal is to normalize relations with Israel, even while making clear President Erdogan's personal, enduring support for the Palestinian cause," he added.

- Both sides long signaled desire to normalize ties

Bryza said he observed that Türkiye and Israel have for "quite some time" been sending signals that they would like to normalize relations.

He noted that signals to improve ties began when Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister, a few years after the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident when Netanyahu expressed an apology for the incident in a call with Erdogan and they agreed on compensation for the families of the Turkish victims.

Bilateral ties between Israel and Türkiye came under strain in 2010 when Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip, in international waters, and killed 10 activists, including Turkish citizens.

However, after talks between the two countries, six years after the incident Turkiye and Israel signed an agreement in June 2016 to resume diplomatic ties.

The process stopped after the deadly attacks against Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Bryza picked up the narrative, saying: "But about two years ago, more or less in August of 2020, it seems to me that the Turkish government decided it wanted to begin improving its relations with a broad range of countries, beginning with Greece, but also Israel and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE (United Arab Emirates)."

He mentioned the visits of Turkish intelligence service head Hakan Fidan and Cavusoglu to some of those countries, excluding Israel.

"It took longer for signals to ramp up" from Ankara over Israel, he added.

Saying that Israel and Türkiye were ready to normalize relations, especially with a new president, Herzog, coming in, Bryza said for the past year when he talked to his academic colleagues, "everybody agreed there was no reason why the relations should not improve."

Even right after the Mavi Marmara incident, Turkish-Israeli trade continued to "triple over the course of a few years, even though there were no normalized diplomatic relations between the two countries," he added.

- Erdogan's support for Palestine 'not a problem' for ties with Israel

Bryza said that Israelis know well that Erdogan's Türkiye will continue to support the rights of Palestinians and added: "It's sort of priced into the equation if you will, to use financial terminology. And that's not a problem."

"Because the Israeli government knows that Türkiye is such an important potential strategic partner," he said.

Mentioning the "strong" relationship between the two countries during the late 1990s and early 2000s, he went on to say that energy would be "one of the fruits of the normalization" between Türkiye and Israel.

"Energy, natural gas, and a possible natural gas pipeline from Israel's Leviathan field to Türkiye... This is a project I've explored for years," he said.

Additionally, he pointed to Türkiye and Israel’s stance on Azerbaijan as another area that brought the two countries together.

"Türkiye and Israel both found themselves on the same side of the Second Karabakh war, both provided important military support to Azerbaijan and in the form of drones in the case of Turkey, the Byraktar TB2s,” said Bryza, referring to the fall 2020 conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani land which Armenia occupied for nearly 30 years before Azerbaijan largely retook it.

“Israel has its own set of loitering munitions, drones that stay above a target and then fly a kamikaze mission and destroy it," he added.

"Both countries have long had a special relationship with Azerbaijan," he said. "So Azerbaijan is an issue that brings the two together."