Few days back, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his country wants to improve relations with Israel. President Erdogan also stated that Turkey has Relations with Israel through Intelligence Channel, however they have difficulties with the people at the top.
After the positive signals from Turkey, Israeli government decided to initiate a low profile out reach to assess the Turkish’s seriousness behind the move. Israel decided to engage the Turkish government privately through back Channel Diplomacy. Turkey established its diplomatic and trade relations with Israel in March 1949. Both Countries also enjoyed Military to Military Defense Collaboration, took parts in Bilateral and multilateral training exercises and Intelligence collaboration in the past. The relations between Turkey and Israel have seen many ups and downs during past seven decades. Mostly Palestine issue remained a bone of contention between the two nations. The recent low in bilateral relations was happened due to Gaza war in 2008. Further the incident of Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which 8 Turkish and one Turkish American Activists were killed again worsened the deteriorating relations between the two countries. Turkey termed the Israeli Policy in Gaza Strip as state sponsored terrorism.
Turkey has been a strong supporter of Palestinian cause despite having diplomatic and trade relations with Israel. US government facilitated the efforts to forged normal bilateral relations between the two US allies in the region during the past years. Presently, Turkey-US Relations were experiencing a hard time so the recent mediation efforts has been initiated by the Azerbaijan. Turkey also showing keenness in normalising it’s Relations with Israel. As per political analysts these efforts have full consent of the United States because contention between Turkey and Israel is contrary to the United States interest in the region.
