by Erika Tamara Traubmann
JERUSALEM, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Israel and Türkiye agreed to restore full diplomatic ties after years of strained relations, as both seek to improve their regional and international positions, experts said.
The two countries will exchange ambassadors again more than four years after they were called back, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid's office said in a statement on Wednesday after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Lapid lauded the move as "an important asset for regional stability and very important economic news for the citizens of Israel." On the other side, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who in May paid the first visit to Israel by a Turkish top diplomat since 2007, also commended the move as an important development of bilateral relations.
FORMER ALLIES
Once close allies, the Israel-Türkiye relations have gone through a string of crises. In 2010, Türkiye cut its diplomatic ties with Israel after Israeli commandos raided a Turkish flotilla led by the Mavi Marmara ship bringing aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing 10 Turkish activists.
The bilateral ties were restored in 2016 after Israel agreed to pay 20 million U.S. dollars to the families of the Mavi Marmara victims.
However, Türkiye and Israel expelled each other's top diplomats in 2018 amid a quarrel over the Israeli killing of 60 Palestinians in Gaza during their protests against the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.
Erdogan, an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause, then strongly condemned Israel's policy toward the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He described Israel as "a terrorist state," accusing it of committing genocide liked the Nazi Germany.
In a major sign of a thaw in the bilateral ties, Israeli President Isaac Herzog traveled to Türkiye in March, in the first trip by a senior Israeli official since 2008.
Herzog hailed Wednesday's announcement, citing that it would "encourage greater economic relations, mutual tourism, and friendship between the Israeli and Turkish peoples."
SHARED INTERESTS
Erdogan indicated his willingness to ease the tensions with Israel after Naftali Bennett was sworn in as Israeli prime minister in June 2021, replacing Israel's longest-serving leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Turkish leader faces a short timeframe for the full restoration of ties with Israel before new Israeli parliamentary elections would take place on Nov. 1, as recent polls predicted a return to power by hawkish Netanyahu.
The latest move came as Israel is pushing to build closer alliances with strategic powers in the Middle East, a trend bolstered by the Abraham Accords, a series of U.S.-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco.
Chen Kertcher, lecturer on conflict resolution at Ariel University in Israel, told Xinhua that Israel has a clear interest in fully restoring its diplomatic ties with Türkiye, which was its closest ally in the Muslim world and an important trade partner.
"What we are seeing here is a careful calculation of shared benefits, not as a result of a shared ideological vision but of necessity. Both countries feel that they must cooperate and the alternative is worse," said Kertcher.
For Türkiye, the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Israel is part of a broader move toward resetting ties with countries in the Middle East, Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior research fellow at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, told Xinhua.
Lindenstrauss said that Türkiye adopted "a very assertive, even provocative, foreign policy" over the past years, which caused dissatisfaction among its neighboring countries. Now Ankara hopes that repairing ties with Israel would have positive implications on its ties with Washington, Lindenstrauss said.
Furthermore, Türkiye has been impacted by an economic crisis and is in dire need of foreign investments. "In this sense, showing moderation in the diplomatic arena can also be more attractive to lure investors to come back to Turkey," said Lindenstrauss.
After a phone call on Wednesday night, Lapid's office said in a statement that the two leaders agreed to continue strengthening the relations, especially in the fields of commerce and tourism.
It said that it "will be reflected in the resumption of Israeli flights to Türkiye and the upcoming convening of the Joint Economic Commission in Israel in September."
At the same time, Ankara also hopes to promote the construction of a pipeline to export Israel's natural gas to Europe via Türkiye. ■
