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Ayalon pours more oil on fire, threatens to expel envoy
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon made that point a day before Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to Turkey on Sunday for the first visit by an Israeli official since the feud erupted last Monday. The visit was scheduled before the row but has been closely observed, especially because the quarrel was just the latest in a series of confrontations between the once-close allies.
Ayalon summoned the Turkish ambassador last week to reprimand him over a TV program that showed Israeli agents kidnapping a child and shooting an old man. He was forced to apologize after Turkey threatened to recall its ambassador.
He seated Turkish Ambassador Oğuz Çelikkol on a sofa lower than his own chair and wouldn’t shake his hand in televised images of the meeting.
Ayalon told Channel 2 TV on Saturday that his intent was not to humiliate Çelikkol. However, he said Israel was right to make it clear to the Turks that there would be a “price” for what he said amounted to trampling upon the dignity of the Jewish state.
Asked what Israel would do if another TV segment to which they objected were to be shown, Ayalon replied, “Maybe we would summon the ambassador; maybe we would expel their ambassador.”
The same threat would apply to ambassadors from other nations that treat Israel similarly, he added -- echoing the attitude of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has instructed Israeli diplomats not to “grovel” before their host countries. Turkey responded coolly to his remarks.
“Since the effects of the crisis sparked by this person and the reactions of both our country and his are known, I don’t think there is need for any further comment,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Burak Özügergin said.
Upon his arrival in Ankara for preparations for Barak’s visit, Çelikkol said the diplomatic crisis with Israel was over after Turkey received the official apology. Yet, the veteran diplomat, who has a diplomatic career spanning 35 years, also underlined that the incident at the Knesset was choreographed like a movie.
Calling the incident “a setup,” Çelikkol told reporters the meeting was portrayed as a courtesy meeting and that he was not informed beforehand that it was about Israel’s uneasiness over a TV series aired in Turkey.
Çelikkol said Ayalon communicated Israel’s uneasiness over the issue during the meeting and that he did not notice anything unusual until the meeting was over. He added he understood everything was a setup when he learned from a reporter that, in response to a photojournalist’s request during the meeting to take a photo of them shaking hands, Ayalon asked them in Hebrew whether they had noticed Çelikkol was sitting in a lower armchair in front of a table with only the Israeli flag on it.
Çelikkol said he would have left the room immediately had Ayalon said this in English. Expressing gratitude for Turkey’s support extended to him over the incident as well as the Israeli media’s principled stance concerning the issue, Çelikkol explained how Israeli people on the street approached him warmly when he went out with friends for coffee on Friday.
“This situation is not a situation in which an ambassador is summoned and told off. In this case, there is a game being played behind the ambassador’s back. This should be seen as a very rare incident in diplomatic history and one which will be remembered in the history books of diplomacy.”
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