By Kerem Oktem
The new chill between once close middle-eastern neighbours reflects both Ankara’s desire to chart a new course and structural changes in the region’s geopolitics. The outcome of both shifts remains open, says Kerem Oktem.
The states of Turkey and Israel have a lot in common, notwithstanding their many differences – in size, history, political background, social character, and religious composition:
- they were founded and built by old-style ethno-nationalists – Zionists in Palestine, Kemalists in Anatolia – inspired by a desire to create homogeneous nation-states
- they are the only two democracies – incomplete and contested, yet lively – in a region of authoritarian regimes and brutal dictatorships
- they have the two strongest armies in the middle east and host the region’s largest non-oil economies
- they have been staunch military allies whose foreign policies were until recently guided by a securitised perception of their neighbourhood; a culture of power-politics; and a degree of discomfort with their Arab neighbours
- they share a sense of isolation and fear, which permeates their domestic and international politics.
These structural overlaps underpin the good relations that Turkey and Israel have enjoyed, which however really took off only after the Israeli-Palestinian peace-process reached a new point with the Oslo accords of 1993. In the ensuing period a common strategic culture that perceived its immediate Arab surroundings in terms of security threats helped to create a sense of shared enemies. This was especially true of the two countries’ military elites, and arms-deals between the Israeli and the Turkish military underlined the strategic (and the skewed) dimension of this partnership.
A whiff of cynicism also blew through Turkey’s successful efforts to enlist parts of pro-Israel opinion in the United States to support – at least by non-involvement on the other side – its campaign to thwart recognition by the US congress of the Armenian genocide.
The lead actors of this strategic partnership were politicians, generals, arms- dealers and lobbyists. Theirs was a marriage of convenience – based on perceptions of shared threats and risks, secret politics and big money. It is now – if the growing number of enraged columns in the Jerusalem Post and the alarmist coverage of Turkey’s perceived “drift to the east” in current-affairs journals is an accurate guide – a marriage in tatters. The partners may be still – just – speaking, but the romance is over. What happened?
The screaming-match
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