A comprehensive openness to Israel serves Turkish interests

Written by: Tamara Haddad
The Turkish regime is considered the most cunning and skillful in formulating positions and framing foreign relations, including the “Turkish-Israeli” ones. Before the recently announced normalization, the relationship showed a political discrepancy between apathy and advancement, and a continuous economic love. Relationship with the Arabs and their issues, and in some of its periods witnessed qualitative shifts that established relationships of a special nature that are completely far from the ideological context that is openly expressed.

Since Turkey has established relations with Israel since 1949, it has known periods of ebb and flow, and Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Israel, on March 28, 1949, less than a year after its establishment on May 14, 1948, and Turkey built its relations with Israel on the basis of common interests.

In some periods, the economic cooperation between Turkey and Israel declined, which reflected more negatively on the Turkish economy, which faced great difficulties, and the value of the Turkish lira fell to an unprecedented record level, so that one dollar equals 4.65 Turkish liras, so Turkey decided to resume cooperation between Turkey and Israel through normalization and formal agreement.

The recent declaration of normalization is an explicit declaration not to boycott Tel Aviv politically, regardless of any of the crises between Ankara and Tel Aviv, and this means Turkey's ability to play with the Palestinian file and the emergence of its clear role in it, and the normalization agreement is the resumption of bilateral relations between the two countries and a clear indication of Turkey's real recognition of sovereignty Israel on the land of Palestine and that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, in addition to the signing of articles that included massive security and military intelligence coordination in the region and economic coordination regarding natural gas.

Turkey is one of the most Islamic countries that have close relations with Israel, and these relations have grown greatly during the rule of parties with Islamic orientations, specifically in the military field, as in the year 2018 the Israeli defense company (ELTA) provided Turkey with electronic devices for four aircraft equipped with a warning and control system Airborne (AWACS), and Turkey bought equipment from (Boeing) and the Israeli company is just an agent of (Boeing), not to mention the strategic aspects between the two sides represented by maritime relations.

The energy field has succeeded in creating a common base for strategic cooperation between Turkey and Israel, as the latter supports from the beginning a project to extend a pipeline from the city of Baku to the port of Ceyhan to transport oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, with the aim of reducing the West's dependence on oil pipelines passing through Iran and Russia. Israel also supports Turkish aspirations aimed at transforming Turkey into a "global energy center", which greatly contributed to closer strategic cooperation between the two countries under the rule of the Justice and Development Party, and made them overcome the obstacles that stood in the way of the development of relations between them, which confirms the Economic cooperation is a fundamental pillar of the strategic relations between the two countries, and not only security and military cooperation, as it seems clear.
Turkey's goal is to be part of the "Strategic Century Project". This project aims to link the four seas "the Caspian, the Black, the Mediterranean and the Red", and helps link the Central Asian region with the Middle East within a Turkish vision for a pivotal role in a "larger energy project" that extends from China east to Europe. west, and from Turkey in the north to India in the south. This project includes, among other things, pipelines to transport oil, gas, water, electricity and optical fibers from Turkey to Israel.

The security cooperation projects between Israel and Turkey have contributed to changing the balance of power in the region, and we should not forget that the Turkish support for the Syrian armed opposition allowed it to cooperate with Israel. Separating Syria from Iran, the second is stopping Iranian support for resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine, and the third is forcing Damascus to conclude a peace agreement with Israel in line with the latter's calculations.

And there is Turkish-Israeli cooperation in the field of security through the establishment of an early warning base in Korajik in the city of Malatya, which is to protect Israel's security, and to give it an opportunity to spy on northern Iran through Azerbaijan.

Trade exchange between Turkey and Israel reached $4.3 billion in 2017, and there are export operations centered on petrochemical industries, given that Turkey is a transit center for the supply of energy towards Europe, not to mention the continuous tourism between the two countries.
Turkey is the first country to export cement to Israel, and the first supplier of iron to Israel, as Turkish iron products covered 45 percent of Israel's total needs in 2017.

Turkey and Israel have significant differences with regard to the Iranian nuclear issue. While Israel views the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat, Turkey does not view Iran as a strategic threat to it, but it realizes that Iran's achievement of nuclear capabilities could change the balance of power in Iran. The region and undermines its stability, as Turkey publicly asserts that it wants the Middle East as a region free of nuclear weapons.

Iran's nuclear aspirations have fostered the "Turkish-Israeli rapprochement," as the two countries share the same fears that Iran might become a nuclear state. The decision-makers in Israel see that the presence of nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran constitutes a real threat, while the Turks see that Iran has become the first threat to them, since the Iranian nuclear weapon will constitute the most dangerous threat to the security of the Middle East region.

And if total normalization takes place between Turkey and Israel, Turkey will not abandon "Hamas", and Ankara still wants to build relations with the movement as a multi-use card, including improving its negotiating position with the Sunni forces in the region and putting pressure on "Hamas" in the event of a war with Israel to establish a long-term armistice. .

a summary:
Turkey's policy with regard to Israel was contradictory, but after the signing of the normalization agreement, the relationship became clear politically, economically, diplomatically, and in security, and whoever scrutinizes the course of "Turkish-Israeli" relations during the past years will discover that there was no crisis in the true sense, but rather a political-media-diplomatic crisis, and it was a well-studied crisis. On the Turkish level, its aim is to win over the Arab and Islamic world, and it is part of the media campaign to build a Turkish role and promote this role in the region to be an entry point to the Arab street. At a high level, we can say that opening up to Israel serves Turkish interests on the economic, military and geopolitical levels.