Jun 21st 2010

Israel and Turkey: What went wrong

by Alon Ben-Meir

 

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.

The now infamous Flotilla incident which resulted in the death of nine Turks has sparked a whirlwind of accusations and provocations between Israel and Turkey that has put the relationship at an all time low. The timing could not have been worse, as Israel and Turkey have struggled to find common ground in their strained relations since the wake of the Gaza war. Yet the political ramifications between both allies are much deeper than the problem of Israel's blockade or Turkey's attempts to break it. Both powers have been intransigent and uncompromising on their views of how to deal with conflict-management, and the latest uproar has highlighted an all around inability to compromise or even see the greater forest through the trees. If there is any prospect of mending their relations, as both sides profess they want, understanding first what went wrong is not only necessary but might help prevent the current conflict from becoming a full fledged crisis. There are a few factors that have contributed to both Turkey and Israel's divergent view of their countries' regional roles that highlight the nature of the disaccord.

One of the first factors behind Turkey's boisterous behavior has to do with its rising position in the global arena in the post-9/11 world. Turkey has benefitted greatly from its status as a member of NATO and the Global 20 largest economies, as well as its customs trade deal with the EU that makes Turkey a major exporting power not dependent on the US market. Add to this Turkey's location, as a border country to the EU, Iraq and Iran, its status as the only other major democracy in the region besides Israel, and its military prowess, and the fact remains that Turkey sees itself in a position to exert a substantial amount of influence in the region. By refusing Turkish airspace to the American's before the Iraq war and very publicly condemning Israel's incursion into Gaza, the voice of the ruling AKP government has also resonated well in the Arab and Turkish street, a factor which plays into a new brand of Turkish populism. The ability to serve as a stabilizing force between Israel and the Arab states, between Iran and its adversaries, and between East and West puts Turkey in a unique position no doubt, but only as it remains in the center of these many poles. But in the wake of the recent events, starting with the Flotilla incident and culminating with Turkey's split from the UN Security Council on sanctions for Iran, it seems Turkey has not only overestimated its power in the region but gambled on some of its most critical relationships.

One factor that has raised concerns about Turkey's role as a mediator is a view that it is trading its impartiality for good favor with its Eastern neighbors. The "zero problems with neighbors" strategy heralded by Foreign Minister Davutoglu sent a message to the world that Turkey was interested in becoming an honest broker and ally to all parties in the region. In theory, the strategy is an admirable one, yet its credibility lies in Turkey's ability to balance its relationships with all parties in practice, without pandering to any one side. Yet since the 2008 Israeli incursion into Gaza, the Erdogan government has consistently used public occasions to rabble rouse and condemn Israeli policies without making much effort to empathize with its Jewish ally or condemn on equal grounds its Arab and Muslim neighbors. The fact is that while improving ties with Syria, Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinians, Iraq and many other Arab states is consistent with Turkey's desire for Middle East stability and to exert regional leadership, undermining its relations with Israel raises serious questions not only about the doctrine of "zero problems with neighbors" but Turkey's ability to be an honest broker. Turkey's leadership in the region will depend entirely on its ability to maintain strong relationships with all parties to the conflict, what it has failed to realize is that as soon as it takes sides it forfeits any potential as a mediator.

Turkey has every right to oppose Israel's blockade of Gaza, to promote a nuclear-free Middle East, or to support bringing Hamas and Hezbollah into the political reconciliation process. But doing so in fiery speeches and PR stints while never acknowledging publicly Israel's security concerns, Iran's nuclear intransigence, or the threats coming from Hamas or Hezbollah have shown a new style of political pandering that the AK Party has adopted in the lead up to elections. Although Mr. Erdogan felt deceived by Israel's former Prime Minister Olmert for not informing him of the pending assault on Gaza, his repeated verbal assaults against Israel without as much as mentioning the 6,000 rockets fired over a period of five years by Hamas gave the Israelis a serious pause as to Turkey's ultimate intentions. Moreover, by singling out Israel as the greatest threat to Middle East peace while standing next to President Sarkozy in Paris, Mr. Erdogan has further invoked a most troubling question about Turkey's desire to restore friendly relations.

Many Israelis have expressed dismay as to how such a strong alliance with Turkey extended over a few decades could come to such an abrupt halt. Here too thereare a number of facts that explain the reasons behind what is happening. It is important to note that however important the strategic alliance between the two countries has been over the years, it did not strike deep roots among the Israeli and the Turkish public. Although hundreds of thousands of Israelis visit Turkey each year, the people-to-people interaction is quite limited. And on an economic level Israel has not been as open to Turkish technology and business deals as would be needed to foster stronger financial ties between businesses and corporations. Thus the relationship has been largely limited to the military realm, which has not been very public at that.

Israel has also failed to live up to the responsibility that goes with a strategic alliance. The Israeli-Turkish strategic alliance covers by its very nature the entire Middle East. As such it is not enough to cooperate on military level without a genuine understanding of either side's regional strategy. Israel never reached out to Turkey in a comprehensive way on Iran, not in just intelligence sharing but in taking into account that Turkey shares a border with Iran and has a vested interest in engagement rather than confrontation with its Iranian ally. Israel also allowed Turkey to invest serious political capital into mediating a peace agreement with Syria before failing to inform Turkey about its incursion into Gaza just as a deal was meant to be signed. Israel has acted as if it is accountable to no one and independent of everyone, which has resulted in its isolation, especially with the Turks who have felt that their peacemaking efforts were rebuked without fair consideration. Turkey feels it has major stakes in all of these issues and it is loath to merely accept Israeli de-facto policies that run contrary to Turkish national interests. From the Turks perspective, a strategic alliance is meaningful only when there is full and open cooperation between the parties.

Finally, Israel has invested little in public relations to inform the Turkish public about its plight with Hamas, Hezbollah and other extremist groups bent on its destruction. Israel, who at one point valued its Turkish relations to be second only to the United States, has not made the effort in Turkey to provide the public with pertinent information or an alternative narrative to what is peddled in the news. Public disgraces like Danny Ayalon's humiliation of the Turkish ambassador have also contributed to an unsavory few of Israel in the Turkish media. But Israel's public relations failure transcends the Palestinian problem; it is the image of intransigence and bullying that the Israeli government portrays which has put Israel on the defensive especially since the advent of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government.

Unfortunately, with both sides there seems to be more smoke and mirrors surrounding gaffe after gaffe than constructive engagement. Mr. Erdogan and Netanyahu do not see eye to eye, but regardless of their discord the fundamentals of the Turkish-Israeli strategic alliance remain solid and central to regional stability and peace. If Israel wants to be accepted as an ally in the region in pursuit of peace, it will need to work with Turkey and listen to its legitimate grievances. It should not have taken the flotilla uproar to force Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza. And just the same, for Turkey to maintain its unique role and position of power as an ally to all sides, it cannot act as if Israel is dispensable. To that end, both nations need to take a step back and commit immediately to a cooling-off period to allow for the resumption of constructive dialogue to mitigate some of thorny issues that separate them. Otherwise, it will become a zero-sum game in which case both countries will end up on the losing side.

Browse articles by author

More Current Affairs

Putin's Brezhnev Moment 
by Aryeh Neier
Feb 6th 2023
EXTRACTS: "Brezhnev, in power from 1964 to 1982, signed the 1975 Helsinki Accords, together with the United States, Canada, and most of Europe. Eager for formal recognition of its borders at the time, the USSR under Brezhnev, together with its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe, underestimated the potential impact of the Accords. That is probably why it agreed to include commitments to respect human rights, including freedom of information and movement, in the agreement’s Final Act." --- "Putin’s regime is turning its back on the legacy of Soviet dissent. Worse, it is replicating the despotic practices of Brezhnev and Soviet totalitarianism. If it continues on this path, it risks ending up in the same place."
The Necessity of Morality in Foreign Policy
by Chris Patten
Feb 5th 2023
EXTRACT: "....when countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and, above all, China flagrantly violate their citizens’ human rights, liberal democracies must unite to constrain their behavior. Ultimately, it is up to those of us who believe in the universality of human rights to expose crimes against humanity and to uphold liberal-democratic values in the face of authoritarian threats" --- "....liberal democracies have a shared responsibility to support the Ukrainians fighting to defend their homeland and to protect their rights to self-determination and statehood in the face of Russian aggression."
Ukraine war: the bloody battle for Soledar and what it tells us about the future of the conflict
by Stefan Wolff
Jan 14th 2023
EXTRACT: "On balance, then, the events in and around Soledar over the past week illustrate that no matter the outcome of the current fighting, this is not a turning point. It’s another strong indication that the war is likely going to be long and costly."
Through the Russian Looking Glass 
by Michael Marder
Jan 14th 2023
EXTRACTS: "Russian President Vladimir Putin has long regarded the collapse of the Soviet Union as a “geopolitical catastrophe.” The invasion of Ukraine, now approaching its one-year anniversary, could be seen as the culmination of his years-long quest to restore the Soviet empire. ..... "With Russia’s economy straining under Western sanctions, some of the country’s leading economists and mathematicians are advocating a return to the days of five-year plans and quantitative production targets." .... "The logical endpoint of a planned economy today is the same as it was then: mass expropriation. Stalin’s collectivization of Soviet agriculture in the late 1920s and early 1930s led to millions of deaths, and the post-communist 'shock therapy' of privatization resulted in the proliferation of 'raiders' and the creation of a new class of oligarchs. Now, enthralled by imperial nostalgia, Russia may be about to embark on a new violent wave of expropriation and redistribution."
China's Autocracy in Crisis 
by Ian Buruma
Jan 11th 2023
EXTRACT: "These developments suggest that Indian economist Amartya Sen was correct when he famously argued in 1983 that famines are caused not only by a shortage of food but also by a lack of information and political accountability. For example, the Bengal famine of 1943, India’s worst, happened under imperial British rule. After India gained independence, the country’s free press and democratic government, while flawed, prevented similar catastrophes. Sen’s thesis has since been hailed as a ringing endorsement of democracy. While some critics have noted that elected governments can also cause considerable harm, including widespread hunger, Sen points out that no famine has 'ever taken place in a functioning democracy.' --- China’s system of one-party, and increasingly one-man, rule is couched in Communist or nationalist jargon, but is rooted in fascist theory. The German jurist Carl Schmitt, who justified Adolf Hitler’s right to wield total power, coined the term “decisionism” to describe a system in which the validity of policies and laws is not determined by their content but by an omnipotent leader’s will. In other words, Hitler’s will was the law."
No More "Chicken Kiev" for Ukraine
by Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Anastassia Fedyk, and Ilona Sologoub 
Dec 29th 2022
EXTRACTS: "On August 1, 1991, a little more than three weeks before Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union, US President George H.W. Bush arrived in Kyiv to discourage Ukrainians from doing it. In his notorious 'Chicken Kiev' speech in the Ukrainian parliament, Bush lectured the stunned MPs that independence was a recipe for 'suicidal nationalism', 'ethnic hatred', and 'Local despotism.' ----- ....the West’s reluctance to respect Ukraine’s desire for sovereignty was a bad omen, revealing a mindset among US and European leaders that paved the way to Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. ----- .... Western observers, ranging from Noam Chomsky to Henry Kissinger, blame the West for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade, or have urged Western leaders to provide Putin a diplomatic off-ramp by compelling Ukraine to give up territory. Policymakers, too, seem to view Ukraine’s self-defense as a bigger problem than Russia’s genocidal aggression. ----- ..... despite the massive material and military support the West has provided to Ukraine, the fateful logic of appeasement lingers, because many Western leaders fear the consequences of Russia’s defeat more than the prospect of a defeated Ukraine. ----- This war is about the survival of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. In the words of the Israeli leader Golda Meir, born in Kyiv, 'They say we must be dead. And we say we want to be alive. Between life and death, I don’t know of a compromise.' "
A China Optimist's Lament 
by Stephen S. Roach
Dec 29th 2022
EXTRACT: "China’s flexible, blended, increasingly dynamic private sector could do all that and more. ----- Then came Xi Jinping. "
COVID and the Chinese Social Contract 
by Joschka Fischer
Dec 29th 2022
EXTRACTS: "For a few years in the late 2010s, it seemed to be only a matter of time before China would replace the US as the world’s largest economy and overwhelmingly dominant technological superpower. Then came the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019. " ---- "How could China’s seemingly all-powerful autocrat understand so little about the social contract on which his power rests? For all its difficulties, liberal democracy – with its transparency and self-imposed limits – has once again proved more efficient and resilient than autocracy. Accountability to the people and the rule of law is not a weakness; it is a decisive source of strength. Where Xi sees a cacophony of clashing opinions and subversive free expression, the West sees a flexible and self-correcting form of collective intelligence. The results speak for themselves."
Andy Warhol Comes to Kyiv
by Alexander J. Motyl
Dec 12th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Next time you’re in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, don’t bother looking for Dostoevsky Street. It’s been renamed: it’s now Andy Warhol Street. ..... because many Ukrainians regard Andy as Ukrainian. Was he? The evidence is mixed." ---- "Warhol remained a committed Greek Catholic all his life. He regularly prayed, both at home and in church, and frequently attended Sunday Mass. His bedside table contained a crucifix, a Christ statuette, and a prayer book. After he died on February 22, 1987, he was buried in St. John the Divine Byzantine Catholic Cemetery, some twenty miles south of Pittsburgh, in a simple grave next to his parents." ---- "When it comes to objective cultural affiliation or subjective ethnic identification, the United States—with its diverse Slavic heritages—has the greatest claim on Warhol and his art."
New food technologies could release 80% of the world’s farmland back to nature
by Chris D Thomas, Jack Hatfield and Katie Noble
Dec 12th 2022
EXTRACT: "Cellular agriculture provides an alternative, and could be one of this century’s most promising technological advancements. Sometimes called “lab-grown food”, the process involves growing animal products from real animal cells, rather than growing actual animals. If growing meat or milk from animal cells sounds strange or icky to you, let’s put this into perspective. Imagine a brewery or cheese factory: a sterile facility filled with metal vats, producing large volumes of beer or cheese, and using a variety of technologies to mix, ferment, clean and monitor the process. Swap the barley or milk for animal cells and this same facility becomes a sustainable and efficient producer of dairy or meat products."
Disrupting the Disruptors 
by Roger McNamee
Dec 5th 2022
EXTRACT: "After a decade of unconstrained growth – when it seemed that a new billionaire was minted every day – the tech industry has finally hit a rough patch. Elon Musk’s erratic behavior following his takeover of Twitter has left the financially leveraged platform in a precarious state. The crypto exchange FTX’s sudden implosion has vaporized a business that was recently valued at $32 billion, taking many other crypto firms with it. Meta (Facebook) is laying off 11,000 people, 13% of its workforce, and Amazon is shedding 10,000. What are we supposed to make of these setbacks? Are they isolated incidents, or signs of structural change?"
The Unavoidable Crash
by Nouriel Roubini
Dec 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "Just looking at explicit debts, the figures are staggering. Globally, total private- and public-sector debt as a share of GDP rose from 200% in 1999 to 350% in 2021. The ratio is now 420% across advanced economies, and 330% in China. In the United States, it is 420%, which is higher than during the Great Depression and after World War II."
Rishi Sunak's Daunting Challenge
by Chris Patten
Dec 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "The Conservative leadership must stand up to the party’s extremists, and it must do so sooner rather than later. If moderates cannot defeat the hardliners by the next election, and the outcome turns out to be as bad for the Tories as recent polls suggest, they will find they have the same fight on their hands in opposition. --- Conservatives must never underestimate the importance of their moderate supporters. If the Party continues to disregard centrists whenever the Brexiteer right stamps its feet, it may find itself out of power for a long time to come."
US midterms: why gen Z and millennials came out to vote and why it marks a generational shift
by Dafydd Townley
Nov 24th 2022
EXTRACT: "....young voters did reach the polls they voted overwhelmingly for Democrat candidates across the country. According to reports, 63% of 18- to 29- year olds voted Democrat and 35% voted Republican in the House of Representatives elections. Voters between 30 and 44 split their vote between the two parties, while older voters tended to vote Republican."
Nouriel Roubini on stagflation, debt distress, financial innovation, and more
by Nouriel Roubini
Nov 24th 2022
Nouriel Roubini: "Central banks are in both a stagflation trap and a debt trap. Amid negative aggregate supply shocks that reduce growth and increase inflation, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they increase interest rates enough to bring inflation down to 2%, they will cause a severe economic hard landing. And if they don’t – attempting instead to protect growth and jobs – they will be left increasingly far behind the curve, leading to a de-anchoring of inflation expectations and a wage-price spiral. Very high debt ratios (both private and public) complicate the dilemma further. Raising interest rates enough to crush inflation causes not only an economic crash, but also a financial crash, with highly leveraged private and public debtors facing severe distress. The resulting financial turmoil that intensifies the recession, creating a vicious cycle of deepening recession and escalating financial pain and debt distress. In these circumstances, central banks will blink. They will wimp out in the fight against inflation, in an effort to avoid an economic and financial crash. But that will lead to a higher permanent inflation rate, while only postponing the arrival of stagflation and debt crises. In other words, central banks in the United States, Europe, and other advanced economies have only bad options."
Disquiet on the Western Front
by Sergei Guriev
Nov 13th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Today’s autocrats wear staid business suits and pretend to be democrats, and that has been sufficient to grant them access to high-level meetings in Davos or at the G20, where they actively recruit former Western politicians, lawyers, public-relations consultants, and think tanks to make their case in the West." ---- "....whatever the weaknesses of Western democracies, they still command a degree of soft power that their autocratic competitors could only dream of. Democracy remains popular around the world – among citizens of both democratic and nondemocratic countries. That is why modern dictators pretend to be democrats." ---- "....there is no shortage of criticism about how the US and Europe function. But that itself is a product of the press freedom and political opposition that one can find only in democracies. But actions speak louder than words: Immigrants from around the world are eager to come to Europe or America, whereas few are trying to get into Russia or China."
Stephen S. Roach on US monetary tightening, China's growth sacrifice, the Sino-American rivalry, and more 
by Stephen S. Roach
Nov 9th 2022
EXTRACT: "In conventional macroeconomics, an economy’s longer-term growth potential is determined by the sum of labor-force and productivity growth. If one of those factors slows, the other must accelerate. Otherwise, long-term growth suffers.  China is in serious trouble on both fronts. An unsustainable one-child family-planning policy –subsequently changed to a two- and now three-child policy – means that the working-age population is declining, and Xi’s speech at the 20th Party Congress suggested that already-strong productivity headwinds are likely to intensify. "
Could Russia collapse?
by Matthew Sussex
Nov 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "First and most obvious – it has happened before. And in an historical sense, it has happened relatively recently, with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 rightly considered a seismic event in world politics. The rub is that nobody predicted the end of the USSR either. In fact, it was confidently assumed in the West that Mikhail Gorbachev would go on ruling the Soviet Union, until the hard-line coup that failed to topple him (but left him mortally wounded in a political sense) made that view obviously redundant." ---- "So is it speculative to talk about a future Russian collapse? Yes. Is there evidence it is imminent? No. But in many ways that’s the problem: when authoritarian regimes implode, they tend to do so very quickly, and with little warning."
Xi's Conflict-Prone China 
by Stephen S. Roach
Oct 25th 2022
EXTRACT: " But in celebrating the CPC centennial, he [XI left little doubt of what those challenges might portend: “Having the courage to fight and the fortitude to win is what has made our party invincible.” A modernized and expanded military puts teeth into that threat and underscores the risks posed by Xi’s conflict-prone China."
The ECB Has Been Driving EU Inflation
by Hans-Werner Sinn
Oct 8th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Recent inflation news from the eurozone’s largest member, Germany, is particularly alarming. In August, producer prices – which measure what is happening at the preliminary stages of industrial production – were a whopping 46% higher than in the same month last year. Given the long-term correlation between the growth rate of producer and consumer prices, this suggests that the latter could soar to 14% in November. Price stability – which is supposed to be the ECB’s uncompromising goal, per the Maastricht Treaty – is no longer perceptible" ----- "Since the 2008 global economic crisis, the ECB has allowed the central-bank money supply to increase twice as fast, relative to economic output, as the US Federal Reserve has. Of that growth, 83% was the result of the ECB’s purchases of government bonds from eurozone countries. With those purchases – which totaled an estimated €4.4 trillion – the ECB pushed interest rates on government bonds to around zero. This spurred countries to disregard European debt rules and accumulate debt at a breakneck pace."