Recent developments in Turkey and Israel have led analysts to speculate that there is a possibility of a Turkish-Israeli rapprochement.

NATO member Turkey was a key regional ally of Israel until the two countries fell out over an IDF operation in the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and early 2009 and an IDF raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza a year later that killed 10 Turkish nationals.

Erdogan further raised hackles in Israel with his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric towards the Jewish state, but the atmosphere has transformed following the revelation last month the two sides were making progress in secret talks to seek a rapprochement.

“Israel  is in need of a country like Turkey in the region,” Erdogan said in remarks to Turkish reporters published in leading dailies Saturday.

“And we too must accept that we need Israel. This is a reality in the region,” said Erdogan.

“If mutual steps are implemented based on sincerity, then normalization will follow.”

Ambassadors were withdrawn in the wake of the 2010 crisis and Erdogan said Turkey’s three conditions for a normalisation were clear — a lifting of the Gaza blockade, compensation for the Mavi Marmara victims and an apology for the incident.

Background

Turkish-Israeli relations were strained when former prime minister, current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticized Israel’s policies on Gaza, saying “you know very well how to kill children” to Israeli then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres in Davos in January 2009. The bilateral relations entered a tougher period as Turkey suspended relations when Israel raided the Mavi Marmara, a Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla, in May 2010.Although trade relations have continued to be strong, Turkey and Israel have been locked in a diplomatic battle. In 2011, Ankara expelled the Israeli ambassador. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come to be known for his fiery condemnations of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, and Israeli officials have accused Turkey of supporting Hamas.

Recently some Israeli news outlets, particularly Haaretz, have published a stream of news reports saying that relations have improved and the two countries have come to terms. However Turkey has announced that there is no such conclusive agreement yet.

The expected deal

Landmark understandings reached in meetings in Switzerland between designated Israeli Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen and Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglui have resulted in Israel’s consent to set up a $20m fund for the victims of the Turkish ship boarded by Israeli soldiers three years ago. No more claims against Israel over the episode will be outstanding and the two ambassadors will return to their posts in Tel Aviv and Ankara. This package is subject to signing by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and president Tayyip Erdogan.

Ankara agreed to ban Palestinian Hamas terror master Salah Arouri’s reentry to his base in Istanbul when he tries to return from a visit to Qatar – a goodwill gesture to Israel. The two parties agreed to launch negotiations without delay on the sale of Israeli offshore gas to Turkey. Ankara also offered to start talking about a pipeline to Europe via Turkey from the largest Israeli gas well, Leviathan, when it goes into production.

The Israeli conviction

Israel is more willing than Turkey to normalize bilateral relations, as it wants to establish a partnership with Turkey over natural gas.

On the other hand, it is a nightmare for Israel that Iran’s influence is increasingly growing, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inked a nuclear deal with the U.S. and Iran is siding with Russia in a clearer manner. Indeed, this course of affairs disturbs not only Israel, but also all Arab countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia. Iran controls Iraq (through sectarianism), Syria through President Bashar Assad and Yemen through the Houthis.

So Iran has disturbed the balances in the region in favor of the Shiite bloc. Israel is in quest of an alliance against Iran, which is one of the leading powers which poses the biggest threat in the region. Likewise it is no secret that there are attempts to pressure Turkey on Syria via Russia and Iran, after the downing of the Russian Su-24 fighter jet which violated Turkish airspace near the border with Syria. This is why the strategic cooperation council which has been established with Saudi Arabia — and close relations with Qatar — matters so much.

Grounds for reconciliation

Secret meetings between Israeli and Turkish senior officials as well as an encouraging statement by President Erdogan have furthered the impression that the moment is ripe for reconciliation. Nevertheless, it seems that the most complicated hurdles to reconciliation: Turkey’s close relations with Hamas, its demand that Israel officially lift the blockade over Gaza, and energy security, have yet to be removed, suggesting that rapprochement might be premature.

To position itself as a central actor in the Muslim world, Turkey sought to take the leading role in the Palestinian issue away from other regional powers, such as Iran and Egypt.

As a party with deep Islamist roots, the AKP has courted the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. Turkey officially hosted a Hamas delegation following the movement’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority general elections. After Hamas leadership denounced Syrian President Assad’s war of against the rebels, the Syrian government closed Hamas’s Damascus headquarters and expelled its leaders. Iran, Syria’s ally, withdrew its financial and logistic support to Hamas. Turkey stepped in to become the movement’s patron, offering a safe haven for Hamas members, who operate from its soil.

The Turkish demand that Israel lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip stems from the Turkey’s effort to position itself as the patron of the Palestinian cause, but for Israel, the demand is a major hurdle to reconciliation.

In open conflict with Hamas, which controls Gaza, Israel feels that the next bloody round against Hamas is only a question of time. With the blockade lifted, Hamas and other Jihadist groups in Gaza will flood Gaza with sophisticated arms – in particular, long-range missiles that endanger Israel’s civilian population and military. As the 2014 war showed, consequences to Gaza’s civilian population can be disastrous. Turkey is also interested in diversifying its energy resources by importing gas from Israel’s large Leviathan Mediterranean gas field. Turkey’s interest in Israeli gas might grow in light of Turkey’s recent crisis with Russia, which provides Turkey with about half of its total gas needs.

But correlating Turkish-Russian tensions with Turkish-Israeli rapprochement may not be sound. Dramatic statements from both capitals aside, Ankara cannot afford to cut off its relations with Moscow, a major global power with increasing involvement in Syria.

“Turkey is determined to not accept any sort of restriction on Turkish assistance to Gaza,” the newspaper said, citing an unnamed senior government official as its source.

Turkish negotiators have presented the demand to their Israeli counterparts in continuing talks over normalizing relations that eroded after the Israeli Navy intercepted a flotilla bound for Gaza in 2010. Israeli officials were attacked as they boarded the Mavi Marmara passenger ship, and the raid concluded with nine dead Turkish activists and dozens of people wounded, the Times of Israel reported.

The two sides resumed reconciliation talks in June after a break of more than a year. With Turkey havingreceived a formal apology from Israel in 2013, Ankara is waiting for Jerusalem to meet the remaining two conditions: compensation for the Turkish citizens who were killed or injured on the Mavi Marmara and an end to the naval blockade of Gaza.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday the Gaza blockade wasn’t going anywhere, according to the far-right news site Arutz Sheva in Israel. “They [Turkey] argued against the blockade on Gaza and of course we don’t intend to change our naval blockade policy,” Netanyahu said at a meeting with his Likud party. “Even though Israel is the country that transfers the [goods for the] existence and rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip, we cannot give up on our security.”

Governed by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Gaza has been under an Egyptian-Israeli blockade since 2007. The total land, sea and air closures have deprived the coastal enclave of basic infrastructure and denied its roughly 1.8 million inhabitants access to vital commodities such as food, fuel and medicine, according to a July report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Palestinians’ thinking

The Palestinians — who look to Turkey as one of the countries in the region that stands by their side — were split. Some believe that the Israeli leaks are true, whereas others are convinced that even to achieve its interests, Turkey would never drop the condition or at least request that the siege be relaxed. Complicating matters are the strained relations between Turkey and several countries, most recently Russia, following Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet on the Syrian border Nov. 24.

Wujdi al-Munirawi, a university student from Gaza City, told Al-Monitor that he is convinced that Turkey will not drop its condition that the siege be lifted because the Palestinian issue is a Turkish foreign relations priority.

He said that the Palestinians are accustomed to the Israeli policy of leaks and broadcasting fabricated news to frustrate the Palestinian street and create an atmosphere of hostility between Palestinians and the Turks. According to Munirawi, the latter have always been at the forefront of supporting Palestinians politically, financially and morally. Since last year, Israel and Turkey have been discussing building a sub-sea pipeline from Israel’s Leviathan gas field to Turkey that would give Israel access to Turkish and European energy markets by 2023. However, ongoing violence in Gaza has scuppered progress.

The Egyptian role

The primary stumbling block to reuniting the important Middle Eastern economic powers, however, has revolved around the Gaza Strip, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would like to see opened to the world — or at least to Turkish aid agencies.

But as a deal nears, Turkey’s top regional rival, Egypt, has expressed worry to Israeli officials over Ankara’s potential reach into the region, Haaretz reportedThursday.

Egyptian officials are concerned a role for Turkey in Gaza, which borders Egypt’s restive Sinai province, could threaten its own security. While analysts said the agreement was likely to support regional peace, they also said the deal, depending on its conditions, could also be seen in Egypt as lending power to a top adversary, as well as causing security concerns by propping up Islamist forces.

Israel has repeatedly sought to have Egypt take on a greater role in Gaza, but according to Schenker, Egyptian leaders have largely shunned the responsibility. Instead, its leaders have imposed a heavy closure on the border, cutting off underground tunnels used to smuggle goods and weapons in and out of Gaza.
Conclusion

Given Turkey’s well-developed technical and institutional infrastructure on the downstream and its desire to become an energy hub, the involvement of skillful US companies such as Noble Energy on the upstream and likely US political and military backing, exporting Israeli gas to Turkey and Europe is a real possibility — despite Ankara’s disagreements with Greece and Cyprus over the latter’s exclusive economic zone.”

In fact, some AKP constituents are already opposing a deal with Israel. Quite tellingly, news of the Turkish-Israeli deal led to an uproar from the Istanbul-based IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, the aid organization that organized the flotilla to break the Gaza blockade in 2010. The religious-oriented IHH’s nine activists died at the hands of Israeli naval commandoes on the Mavi Marmara. On Dec. 18, the secular and anti-AKP website OdaTV quoted IHH Secretary-General Yavuz Dede, who labeled a deal with Israel “treachery.”

Despite the tensions and reservations posed to the deal, both Erdogan and Netanyahu have a clear interest in restoring the relationship between the two states. Both understand that the most beneficial way to make use of Israel’s natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean is to sell the gas to Turkey and to get it there through an underwater pipeline.But Israeli policy– towards the Palestinians ,particularly in the Gaza Strip–holds the key to any positive deal between Ankara and Tel Aviv.