Turkey’s military cooperation agreement with Israel will continue as agreed earlier this year, Turkish President Suleiman Demirel said this week in an interview with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.
His comments were seen as politically important in view of fears in Israel that the recently installed pro-Islamic government of Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan would cool relations with Jerusalem.
In the interview, Demirel said the agreement was not a defense pact, but rather an agreement on military training and cooperation.
The agreement would proceed in the same way as other bilateral accords with Israel were being adhered to under the new coalition government in Turkey, he added.
Demirel said it was “misleading” to refer to the new Turkish government as “Islamist,” adding that it was a constitutionally created coalition between two political parties: Erbakan’s Welfare Party and Tansu Ciller’s secularist True Path Party.
In any event, Demirel continued, the fundamentals of Turkey’s foreign policy would not change.
Demirel stressed repeatedly during the interview his country’s resentment against Syria for supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party, which Turkey fights as a terrorist movement.
He reiterated Turkey’s plans to establish a security zone in northern Iraq to prevent attacks by the Kurdish group in southeast Turkey.
Demirel also urged the Netanyahu government to press ahead with the peace process and “not to allow the present opportunity for peace to slip by.”
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.
