ANKARA (Dispatches) – The occupying regime of Israel and Turkey are restoring full diplomatic relations, Zionist premier Yair Lapid announced in a statement on Wednesday. The two sides will now trade ambassadors.
The decision comes after Lapid’s visit to Ankara and his meetings with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, and his conversation with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Cavusoglu confirmed the news and claimed Turkey will continue to defend Palestinian rights and the status of Al-Quds through its ambassador in Tel Aviv.
He said they will now choose someone to be appointed as ambassador.
Israeli foreign ministry official Alon Ushpiz spoke with the Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sadat Unal on Tuesday and “the two concluded the matter”, the statement said.
The officials decided to raise the level of relations to full diplomatic representation and to reinstate the ambassadors and consuls general.
Relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv have been rocky since 2011, when Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador after a UN report into the Zionist regime’s raid of the Mavi Marmara aid ship to Gaza in 2010, which killed nine Turkish nationals.
The rift was healed in 2016 when full diplomatic relations were restored and both sides sent ambassadors.
Tensions were renewed in 2018 when Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians taking part in the Great March of Return protests in Gaza. The protesters demanded the implementation of refugees’ right of return and an end to the crippling 11-year siege on Gaza.
Turkey recalled all of its diplomats and ordered the Zionist regime’s envoy out of the country.
The latest development comes five months after the occupying regime’s president Isaac Herzog visited Erdogan in Ankara, in the first visit by a Zionist president to Turkey since 2008.
Before that visit, a year of silent Turkish and Israeli intelligence cooperation had convinced Tel Aviv that Turkey was a rational actor that acted upon its interests, rather than ideological standpoints.
An Israeli official told Middle East Eye that the Zionist regime has its own motivations to mend ties, with the Biden administration seeking ways to extricate the United States from the Middle East.
But they were proceeding with caution when it came to Turkey. A previous attempt at reconciliation collapsed in 2018 over Israeli violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Experts believe both sides found value in their relationship and incentives to come closer during events first in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 and then in Afghanistan in 2021.
Turkey and the occupying regime of Israel have a common ally in Azerbaijan, and found themselves working to help it by supplying military resources used by Baku to push Armenian forces out of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We didn’t coordinate anything, but it showed everyone that Turkey and Israel indeed have common security challenges and could work together in some areas,” said the Turkish official.
Gallia Lindenstrauss, an analyst with expertise in Turkey-Israel relations, said Turkey’s recent rapprochement with other regional actors, such as the UAE, was reassuring for the occupying regime of Israel.
“The rapprochement between Turkey and Israel began before the war in Ukraine started, but the ramifications of this war can be seen as another impetus for Turkey and Israel to improve their communication channels and coordination,” she said.
However, Turkish officials have been careful to point out that their relationship with Israel wasn’t an alliance against Iran.
“We are very clear in what we do. We have a really principled stance on this,” the Turkish official said.
One particularly touchy subject between Turkey and the occupying regime of Israel has always been Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement that rules the Gaza Strip.
Last year, Israel said that it would want to see Ankara take some steps against the presence of Hamas leaders in Turkey before launching into reconciliation talks. Turkey refused, however, maintaining relations with the group and continuing to host some of its leaders in Istanbul.
A senior Israeli official earlier this year told the Jerusalem Post that this time they didn’t have any preconditions regarding Hamas, an overt backstep.
“There has been no change of
Turkey’s policy regarding Hamas,” the source close to the government said. “As it was before, Turkey won’t allow Hamas to conduct attacks in Israel. And that has been the case for many years.”
Turkish and Zionist officials have both said that the prospect of bringing stolen Palestinian and Lebanese gas to Turkey through a pipeline in the eastern Mediterranean was a chief incentive to repair their relationship.
“The market logic to bring Israeli gas to Turkey for domestic use and export to Europe has existed for at least eight years and has not changed,” said Michael Tanchum, a fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
“With events in Ukraine focusing a sense of urgency on natural gas, combined with Turkey’s recent rapprochement efforts with Israel and other Middle Eastern actors, the previous political obstacles could be resolved.”
A second Turkish official said both sides had been conducting a feasibility report to work towards bringing gas to Turkey, yet they were aware of the challenges.
An Israeli plan to build a pipeline from its Leviathan gas field to Cyprus and then to Greece has effectively collapsed, as the U.S. withdrew support for the so-called East-Med Pipeline Project last year. Some sources based in Washington told MEE that the occupying regime of Israel might have encouraged the Biden administration to do so because it didn’t want to risk a rupture with Cyprus and Greece.
Oded Eran, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Occupied Palestine and a former Israeli ambassador to Jordan and the EU, said the Turkish route for gas has long been seen as the best feasible solution.
“Yet there are a series of obstacles, like the political issues with Cyprus and Syria,” he said. “If you build the pipeline close to Cyprus, you have an issue. If you build it close to the Syrian coast, you have an issue.”
Eran believes the occupying regime of Israel’s recent efforts to bring stolen Palestinian gas to Egyptian facilities to install them as LNG and ship them to the international markets also decreased the importance of bringing it to Turkey.
“However, it still has great potential if you could work the Lebanese gas fields and combine it with Israeli and some Egyptian gas. The pipeline could really make a change,” he said.
With Russia’s war on Ukraine, Europe is under pressure to diversify from Russian gas. But according to Eran, Palestinian gas cannot replace Russia’s, but could nonetheless diversify European energy resources to a great extent.
And with Lebanon and the occupying regime of Israel technically enemy states, working out a deal with them may not be on the horizon any time soon. However, the senior Turkish official says whether with Lebanese gas or not, Israel would prefer the Turkish option because it would be far less costly than other options, despite the political issues.
“With the Egyptian option, you have many costs, from carrying, stockpiling, liquefying and selling it to the spot markets with a much lower price,” the official said. “But Turkey itself is a market with a growing energy need, and it has several pipelines laid down to export it to Europe with a good price.”