A New York Times editorial on Aug. 2 summed it up well: “It took too long, but Israel made the right decision in saying it would cooperate with a United Nations-led investigation into its disastrous attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship. Only a transparent and credible inquiry has a chance of calming international outrage over the incident and beginning to repair fractured Israeli-Turkish ties.” This has been the Turkish position from the very beginning.Until a few days ago, many dismissed Turkey’s demands as empty and idealistic, referring to Israel’s staunch rejection of such demands in the past. Back in June, the Netanyahu government said it would form its own commission, which it did, and rejected any international inquiry, citing as its reason the alleged tendency of such commissions to be anti-Israeli. Now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, “Israel has nothing to hide,” and that it is in Israel’s “national interest to ensure that the factual truth about the entire flotilla incident is revealed to the whole world.” This, too, is what Turkey has been saying all along.
The commission will start its work on Aug. 10 and is expected to complete its report in a relatively short period of time. It will work with Israeli and Turkish authorities as well as those who organized the aid flotilla and others. The commission’s final report will be the best document by which to assess and judge the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla and the killing of nine Turkish citizens, one of whom was the 19-year old US citizen Furkan Doğan, who Roger Cohen of the New York Times has called “the forgotten American.”
The fact that the commission will work under a UN mandate is a reaffirmation of international law and will be crucial for the credibility of the much-criticized and disempowered United Nations. By agreeing to the UN commission, the Netanyahu government has acted with common sense and admitted the degree to which it has isolated itself from the rest of the world.
The commission is also a victory for Turkish diplomacy. Many criticized Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu for raising the stakes too high and using harsh rhetoric against Israel. But this is only one side of the story. Over the last two months since the attack, the Turkish side has managed the process rather well, using tough language when needed and keeping a low profile when it saw progress in backdoor diplomacy. Furthermore, it did not shy away from any meaningful engagement to get results.
But the bigger picture is more important here, and that is the situation in Gaza and the Middle East peace process. The realities on the ground in Gaza, exacerbated by the blockade and the vicious political struggle between Fatah and Hamas, confirm that the Gaza blockade is not sustainable. This is what President Barack Obama said when he met Mahmoud Abbas at the White House last month. The same view was reiterated by Lady Catherine Ashton of the EU after she visited Gaza and British Prime Minister David Cameron when he visited Turkey last week. The position of the Turkish government on Gaza is now shared by a growing number of international actors.
What happens next in Gaza and the talks between Israelis and Palestinians will be crucial for the peace process. The picture is rather bleak there because the temporary freeze on settlements until Sept. 26 conveniently leaves out construction work in East Jerusalem, a policy to which the Palestinians are adamantly opposed. The failure of the Palestinians to reach national reconciliation is further complicating matters. The upcoming interim elections in the US in November mean that President Obama will do very little for the peace process over the next four months. Turkish concerns over the future of the peace process, shared by many, remain as sharp.
Over the last two months, some have demonized Turkey for confronting Israel over its disastrous conduct of the Gaza aid flotilla, pressing all kinds of charges, from tacit anti-Semitism to a change in its foreign policy direction. The formation of the commission shows that Turkey uses its smart power, engages international institutions and seeks to resolve its issues through international law. As Daniel Kilman and Joshua Walker argued in the Christian Science Monitor on Aug. 3, this is another reason why the idea of “having lost Turkey” is simply wrong.
