Turkey’s budding alliance with Israel, having survived sharp criticism from the Arab world, is about to face a new challenge — this time from the premier’s office in Istanbul.
Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the Islamist Welfare Party and a vocal critic of the Turkish-Israeli partnership, is slated to become the new Turkish prime minister, after reaching a coalition agreement with former Premier Tansu Ciller, leader of the True Path Party.
The announcement last Friday of the agreement appeared to bring to an end nearly seven months of political instability since the Welfare Party won 158 of the 550 seats — more than any other party — in the Turkish Parliament in December’s elections.
The new coalition still must pass one more hurdle — a vote of confidence by Parliament. Some True Path members were threatening to oppose the partnership with the pro-Islamic group.
But observers believe that the Islamic leader, having joined with a secularist party that was responsible for the upgrading of ties to the Jewish state, will moderate his views once he is in office.
Maintenance of Turkey’s Western orientation, in fact, appears to be safeguarded by the coalition agreement itself.
Erbakan and Ciller are expected to rotate the premiership, with Erbakan taking the post first. The allocation of Cabinet posts leaves Ciller’s True Path party in control of the Foreign and Defense ministries.
As foreign minister and deputy premier, Ciller would not allow a deterioration of relations with Israel, Sami Kohen, a senior columnist and editor at the Milliyet newspaper, said in a telephone interview.
Erbakan undoubtedly would try to strengthen relations with the Arab world, and even Iran, said Kohen, who added that one should not expect immediate changes in Turkey’s foreign policy, however.
Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University said in an interview that he was not concerned about Erbakan’s rise to power.
He said the army, which is still the major power in Turkey and the driving force behind the special relations with Israel, would watch Erbakan’s coalition closely.
Kohen ruled out a possible army attempt to foil the new coalition.
The latest turn in Turkey’s domestic politics came barely a week after an Arab summit in Cairo called on Istanbul to reconsider the military pact it signed in February with the Jewish state.
The criticism reflected in particular the deep concerns Syria holds about two militarily powerful neighbors that are viewed in Damascus as enemies.
Only two weeks before the Cairo summit, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah and Syrian President Hafez Assad, meeting in Damascus, had called on Turkey to re-evaluate its pact with Israel.
But Turkey has shown no sign that it would heed the concerns voiced by Arab leaders.
A day after the summit ended, Yasar Yakis, Turkey’s ambassador to Egypt, warned Syria that his country might expand its partnership with Israel if Damascus did not stop “exporting terrorism.”
Turkey has shared Israel’s views of Damascus as an active sponsor of terrorist organizations.
While Israel has charged Damascus with allowing radical Palestinian groups to operate from there and with giving support to the fundamentalist Hezbollah’s activities in southern Lebanon, Turkey has charged Syria with providing a safehaven for Kurdish terrorists operating in eastern Turkey.
Syria’s support for the Kurds is seen in Turkey as a sort of retaliation for a series of dams Turkey is building on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to provide hydroelectric power and irrigation.
The two rivers are important water sources for Syria as well as Iraq, and construction of the dams has caused a diversion of much of the water.
Not only do Israel and Turkey share common enemies. They have a common, valuable friend in the United States.
Turkey, with a population of 63 million, regards itself as a European power.
It is a veteran member of NATO, with the second largest army after the United States, and is continuing to seek membership in the European Union.
Its Western orientation made the partnership with Israel only natural.
The military accord between Israel and Turkey was the first such agreement the Jewish state ever reached with an Islamic country.
Few of the agreement’s details have been revealed, except that it allowed each country to use the other’s air space for pilot training, reciprocal ship visits and sending delegations to military academies. Joint army and naval exercises were envisaged for the future.
Still, the very agreement between these two major non-Arab powers in the Middle East amounts to a major strategic development in the region and a significant event in the evolution of Turkish-Israeli relations.
Although Turkey was the first Muslim country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel back in 1949, it was only after the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian accord that Turkey sent its first ambassador to Israel.
David Granit, who was Israel’s ambassador to Turkey from 1993 to 1995, recalled in a recent symposium at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan how the former foreign minister of Turkey postponed his visit to Israel three times.
He came in November 1993, two months after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Declaration of Principles that has provided the framework for their peace talks.
The flow of Turkish visitors to Israel has continued since, with Ciller herself coming last October.
The Arab-Israel peace process gave Turkey the green light to formalize its relationship with Israel. With the signing of the military pact, Turkey has lost all inhibitions about deepening ties with the Jewish state.
In addition to their strategic ties, the two countries also have growing economic relations.
Israeli tourism to Turkey has increased more than seven times in the past four years, from 50,000 in 1992 to 380,000 last year.
Trade between the two countries reached last year a record of $450 million.
The two countries hope that a free trade agreement will boost their bilateral trade to $1 billion a year.
But in one area, Israel’s hopes have so far been dashed. Israel wanted to sign a long-term agreement — of some 20 to 30 years — of buying water from Turkey. The Turks refused, saying that even though their water resources were abundant for now, they would need it for their own purposes in the distant future.
Meanwhile, the 25,000-strong Jewish community in Turkey is not worried, said veteran Turkish journalist Kohen. The Jews, like the rest of the Turkish population, share the “wait and see” approach.
“Remember,” said Kohen, “this is a coalition government, not an all-out Welfare government.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
