Oddly enough, the day Israel gave its go-ahead to the UN on the international probe, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak targeted National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan. This was not done by the already temperamental Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman but by Barak, the leader of the Labor Party and the most moderate actor in Israeli politics.
Unaware that his speech was being recorded, Barak said: “Turkey is a friendly country, a strategic ally, but the nomination in recent weeks of a new chief of the Turkish secret service who is a supporter of Iran worries us. There are quite a few secrets of ours [entrusted to Turkey] and the thought that they could become open to the Iranians over the next several months, let’s say, is quite disturbing.”
In this case, we should focus on why bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel cannot recover. It would be a flawed analysis to argue that the escalating tension can be attributed to the attack on Gaza, the lower seat scandal or the Mavi Marmara raid. We cannot get to the real source of the crises that have a tendency to erupt every now and then on various occasions if we ignore the fundamental factors lying in the background.
Just as the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) ascension to single-party government in 2002 disturbed some groups inside, who, as we learned later, had cooperated to lay the groundwork for the eventual overthrow of the government, it created a similar uneasiness outside. You can be assured that Israel was one of the countries where this uneasiness surged to the top. Moreover, this change not only carried pious people to influential positions in the state apparatus, but also foiled all attempts by those opposed to stop this process, and this apparently transformed this uneasiness into anger.
I don’t know what sorts of documents the intelligence organizations hold about how this anger was translated into action, but I can say that what I witnessed from some Israeli officials is that the uneasiness they felt about the AK Party is not less than that felt by typical AK Party opponents inside the country. The AK Party leadership’s close interest in the Middle East, its warm relations with Syria and Iran, and ties established with Hamas were not the source of this antipathy, but factors that reinforced it.
Indeed, the main problem here was that the sort of relations mediated between military officials of both countries in a manner that was controversial in political and social terms became clearly improper as Turkey made big strides in democratization.
In the new period, it was impossible to maintain the relations that were tailored by Çevik Bir, the architect of the postmodern military coup that reached its peak during the Feb. 28 process.
Indeed, the likelihood of the AK Party appointing one of its members as the new president in 2007 created great uneasiness among the same circles. The big disappointment created by the AK Party putting an end to this process and its winning its way back to a second term as a single party with an overwhelming victory on July 22, 2007 could be seen in the writings of a famous Jewish author, Hillel Halkin, in its most clear form.
In his column in The New York Sun, Halkin wrote about interesting views of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s genealogy before asserting that the Islamic counterrevolution declared victory on July 22 and that there was no longer a need to hide anything. If Turkey’s democratization and it coming to terms with its own identity, past and neighbors were to be interpreted as such by the powers that be in Israel, no one would expect an easy recovery in bilateral ties. Indeed, according to this mentality, Turkey had to return to the military tutelage for bilateral ties to improve again.
However, Israel can establish normal and even healthier relations with a democratic Turkey. Except for a small minority of extremists, no one in Turkey raises objections to Turkey having normal relations with Israel. In contrast, everyone sees it as an asset for Turkey to have good ties with both Israel and the Arab world. This is a commonly held view even among Arab politicians and intellectuals. In an interview he gave to us, Bashar al-Assad said this much clearly. This is what former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said to us last week.
At this point, the crucial question is: Will Israel stop seeing a democratizing Turkey as a lost friend or an enemy?
