Ora Coren on Thursday cited figures from the Israeli Credit Insurance Company (ICIC), which provides foreign trade insurance, to show that exports to Turkey were still at the level of $100 million per month in June and July. This comes out to $1.2 billion a year, similar to levels seen prior to the flotilla clash in May.
After the incident, fears in Israel surfaced of a Turkish boycott of Israeli-made products, but the ICIC numbers prove these concerns to have been unfounded, the newspaper concluded.
The newspaper said the disaster also apparently failed to slow new export agreements. Demand for credit insurance for new deals between Israel and Turkey has remained the same over the course of the last two months. The ICIC’s release indicated that there were 26 new export deals with Turkey in June and 33 in July, similar to figures for the months preceding the flotilla crisis. As usual, the deals were largely in the chemical, plastics, metal and equipment industries.
The newspaper quoted ICIC CEO David Milgrom as saying: “Turkey is considered one of Israel’s most important export markets, and it is very important to see that despite the images of big demonstrations there, in practice Turkish business people have not cut their ties with Israel, as of now.”
The daily also reported a revival of tour packages from Israel to Turkey’s tourism capital of Antalya again after a lull following the flotilla assault, citing Flying Carpet, an Israeli tour agency that is restarting its flights to the city on Aug. 2, using Turkish charter airline Onur Air.
