Between crises and cooperation: The future of Turkish-Israeli relations

Insight Turkey

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 57-74

  Aytürk, Ilker ^a  

^a BILKENT UNIVERSITY   (Turkey)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65349104604     PISSN: 1302177X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. The classical work on the state of Israel's international legitimacy is Aaron S. Klieman, Israel and the World after 40 Years (Washington, DC: Pergamon, 1989).
2. Murat Yetkin, "İsrail-Pakistan Buluşmasinin Perde Arkasi Neydi?," Radikal, 14 September 2005.
3. Serhat Erkmen, "Suriye-İsrail Görüsmeleri ve Türkiye'nin Rolü," 〈www.asam.org.tr〉, accessed on 1 March 2009.
4. Tovah Lazaroff, "Olmert: I Was Close to a Meeting with Syrian FM," Jerusalem Post Online Edition, 26 February 2009;
5. Tsvi Bar'el, "Olmert ve-Asad sohahu sha'ot be-telefon be-emtsa'ut Erdogan," Haaretz, 13 February 2009.
6. "Lo tir'tsach (öldürmeyeceksin)," Hürriyet, 17 January 2009.
7. "Erdogǎn İsrail Başbakani'na Sert Çikti," Sabah, 18 February 2009.
8. SP is the successor to the former Refah Partisi (The Welfare Party) and is still in the orbit of the former party chairman Necmettin Erbakan.
9. 〈www.agd.org.tr/99-ANKARA-DA-MUHTESEM-MITING.htm〉, accessed on 1 March 2009.
10. "Dlyarbakir'da 50 Bin Kişi İsrail'i Protesto Etti," Hürriyet, 4 January 2009. The Diyarbakir meeting was organized by the Mustazaf-Der, a new and very effective local grassroots movement with Kurdish and Islamic overtones.
11. "Başbakan Erdogan İsrail'i Karistirdi," Bugün, 3 February 2009.
12. 〈www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches%20by%20Israeli%20leaders/ 2009/Address-PM-Olmert-Conference-Presidents-15-Feb-2009.htm〉, accessed on 2 March 2009.
13. "İsrail: Türkiye Bize Saygih Olsun," Radikal, 1 February 2009.
14. Although both sides cannot seem to agree on the contents of that conversation, Peres called Erdoǧan after their clash at Davos expressed those cordial feelings to him in person. Barak Ravid and Yoav Stern, "Israel: Erdogan's Davos Behavior May Ruin Turkey's EU Chances," Haaretz, 1 February 2009.
15. Irit Rosenblum and Zohar Blumenkrantz, "Israeli Tourists Stay Away from Turkey after Peres Row with Erdogan," Haaretz, 1 February 2009.
16. "Pessah Warning: Stay Away from Sinai and Other Hot Spots," Jerusalem Post Online Edition, 8 March 2009.
17. Rosenblum and Blumenkrantz, "Israeli Tourists."
18. Academics associated with Israel's foremost Holocaust research institution, the Yad Vashem, are among the critics of the Israeli policy. Especially Yair Auron's books, accusing Israel for being indifferent to genocides elsewhere, made an impact on the public opinion in Israel;
19. see Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2000);
20. idem., Ha-banaliyut shel ha-adishut: yahas ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be-Erets Yisra'el ve-ha-tenu'ah ha-tsiyonit le-retsah ha-am ha-Armeni (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1995).
21. Sean Gannon, "Genocide by Any International Standard," Jerusalem Post Online Edition, 12 February 2009. The editorial article in Haaretz on 16 February 2009 disapproved of the Foreign Ministry's threat and invited Israeli politicians to hold the higher moral ground: "The debate is not whether to define the killing of Armenians as genocide or a holocaust. This is a moral issue that obligates us to re-examine history and offer a value-based judgment.... If Israel seeks to alter its stance on the question of the murder of the Armenians, it would be wise to do so at a more appropriate time, from a worthy position of morality and not as a way to make threats. It shouldn't happen whenever a disagreement erupts with Turkey." See, "A Cynical Use of Morality," Haaretz, 16 February 2009;
22. and "Shimush tsini be-musar," Haaretz, 16 February 2009.
23. Herb Keinon, "Turkey Irked by IDF General's Remarks," Jerusalem Post Online Edition, 14 February 2009.
24. Keinon, "Turkey Irked by IDF General's Remarks,"
25. Barak Ravid and Yossi Melman, "Shagrir Yisra'el be-Ankarah zuman le-sihat havharah beekvot divrei ha-aluf Avi Mizrahi," Haaretz, 14 February 2009.
26. Yaakov Katz, "IDF Head 'Sorry' General Slammed Turks," Jerusalem Post Online Edition, 19 February 2009. Italics mine.
27. For Israeli responses to Maj. Gen. Mizrahi, see Benni Ziffer, "Al ha-miflas ha-inteligentsiyah shel aluf Avi Mizrahi," Haaretz, 16 February 2009;
28. and Zvi Bar'el, "Haaluf Mizrahi garar gam et tsava Turkiyah le-mashber ha-yahasim she-notsar be-ekvot mivtsa oferet yetsukah be-Azah," Haaretz, 15 February 2009.
29. Zeev Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army (1870-1974) (San Fransisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1974), 268-279;
30. Yoram Peri, Between Battles and Ballots: Israeli Military in Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-18;
31. Martin van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), 108-109.
32. Zvi Bar'el, "Why We Need Turkey," Haaretz, 22 February 2009.
33. Zvi Bar'el, "Lamrot ha-milhamah ha-milulit bein Yisra'el le-Turkiyah, ha-yahasim ha-mediniim ve-ha-tsva'iim bein shtei ha-medinot shavirim pahot me-ha-nire la-ayin," Haaretz, 21 February 2009.
34. "İsrail lie Problemimiz Yok," Yeni Şafak, 23 February 2009.
35. Mehmet Ali Kişlali, "Asker ve Israil," Radikal, 21 February 2009.
36. The phrase is from Ecclesiastes 3:7.
37. Fehmi Koru, "İsrail Nereye Gidiyor?" Yeni Şafak, 20 February 2009;
38. Tamer Korkmaz, "Davos'da Zalimin Suratina Hakikati Haykirmak," Yeni Şafak, 1 February 2009;
39. All Bulaç, "Davos'ta Bati'nin Defosu," Zaman, 31 January 2009.
40. "Babacan ve Livni Bir Araya Geldi: Davos'tan Sonra İlk Buluşma," Şalom, 11 March 2009.
41. "İsadami Jak Kamhi Peres İle Görüstü," Sabah, 19 February 2009.
42. "Cumhurbaşkani Gül İsrail'e Gidecek," Milliyet, 27 February 2009.
43. For an extreme case of insensitivity, see Tamer Korkmaz, "Şu İşe Bakin," Yeni Şafak, 22 February 2009.
44. The electoral success of Avigdor Lieberman's party, Yisrael Beitenu, for example has been read, by and large through the contorted lenses of Turkish politics, as the worrisome rise of the religious right-wing in Israel. What many Turkish commentators missed, however, was that Yisrael Beitenu is mainly a party of Russian immigrants and has run a militantly secularist election campaign. Lieberman even managed to pressure Binyamin Netanyahu to leave all religious parties out of the government as part of the coalition agreement. Shas, which joined the government, may be considered an exception, but in that case, too, the religious ideology of the party is balanced by its ethnic vote.
45. PM Erdoǧan's former spokesperson and now Radikal columnist, Akif Beki, recently claimed that "this warning to the Children of Israel [İsrailoǧullari] in the language of their faith certainly had a great impact on them." Akif Beki, "CHP'ye Üçü ncü Emir!," Radikal, 11 February 2009. As an observer of Israeli domestic politics on an almost daily basis, I am yet to come across one single example of that great impact.
46. "Çankaya'da Antisemitizm Hassasiyeti," Şalom, 4 March 2009; interview with Silvio Ovadya, "Anayasa ve Demokrasi Yeter Bize," Milliyet, 2 February 2009.
47. As a matter of fact, an Israeli specialist on Türkey, Dr. Anat Lapidot-Firilla, dubbed Turkish willingness for mediation in the Middle East "The Turkish man's burden", finding a Kiplingesqueflavor in the new trend in Turkish foreign policy; see Anat Lapidot-Firilla, "What is behind Turkey's Antagonism to Israel?," Haaretz, 21 February 2009.
48. The best account of the Oslo process can be found in David Makovsky, Making Peace with the PLO: The Rabin Government's Road to Oslo (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996).
49. The deplorable state of Israeli studies in the Arab world is described in a new bookby Hassan A. Barari, Israelism: Arab Scholarship on Israel, a Critical Assessment (Reading: Ithaca Press, 2009).
50. To the best of my knowledge, I am the proud owner of the largest library of Hebrew books in Ankara, 46 volumes altogether!