After a year of invasions, attacks, aggression, ethnic-cleansing, using Syrian refugees as mercenaries, buying Russian defense technology and working with Iran to oppose the US role in Syria, Turkey’s regime is trying to change its tune to sabotage Israel’s growing friendship with Greece and the UAE.

Ankara has worked closely with western lobbyists and experts who it has cultivated over the years to push this narrative. It is a sophisticated attempt aimed at trying to convince Israel’s government that Ankara wants a new leaf in relations, but Ankara refuses to change and merely wants to muddy the waters between Israel and Jerusalem’s partners in the region.

The push began at Israel HaYom, a newspaper Ankara assumes is read by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and which it thinks is a line directly into Israel’s right-leaning ruling politicians. Turkey watched closely the US election, afraid of president-elect Joe Biden after having poured support towards the Trump administrations.

Between December 5 and 6 articles appeared in Hebrew and then English suggesting that Turkey wanted reconciliation with Israel after a decade in which Ankara’s increasingly anti-Israel regime had hosted Hamas and compared Israel to the Nazis. The “reconciliation” would involve Turkey getting everything it wanted and ruining Israel’s relations with Greece and Cyprus.

Israel had signed a gas pipeline deal with Greece and Cyprus this year and Turkey wants to sabotage that. So “reconciliation” would mean Israel losing allies and Turkey hosting Hamas terrorists and calling Israel a nazi country. Turkey would get everything. Israel: Nothing.

Turkey also pushed this story via Al-Monitor, with an article claiming shared interests on Iran and in the Caucasus push Israel and Turkey closer. In fact Turkey often welcomes Iran regime figures and with Iran it supports Hamas and vows to “liberate” Jerusalem. There is no evidence Israel and Turkey have any shared interests on Iran. But the article claimed “secret contacts between Turkey and Israel.”

There was. No evidence of these supposedly “secret” contacts except Turkey purposely leaking this to make it seem Israel was ready to do Ankara’s bidding. This is the same Turkish regime that said “Jerusalem is ours” and frequently bashes Israel. The regime has never said anything positive about Israel in the last decade. An article on November 30 at Al-Monitor also suggested a “secret channel.” If it’s secret why is Turkey talking so much about it to journalists?

Nevertheless, the willing lobbyists who work on Ankara’s behalf pushed this narrative, complete with maps made in Turkey printed in Israeli media and think tanks. The maps showed Turkey controlling waters off Cyprus and even maybe carving away part of Israel’s Exclusive Economic Zone. This would be “reconciliation” by way of surrendering Israel’s decades of work on gas development at sea and Israel’s work with Cyprus, Greece, and Egypt. Israel’s work with Greece is also linked to the new peace with the UAE because the UAE and Greece are increasing cooperation.

Turkey’s regime led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and is the main opponent of Egypt’s current leadership. Turkey even threatened to break relations with the UAE for normalizing ties with Israel. Ankara has worked to isolate Israel and stop normalization, threatening countries that work with Israel. This is part of Turkey’s “reconciliation.”

Ankara also pretended it was willing to “mend fences” by appointing a new envoy who is known for anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views. Reports last week said Turkey had appointed Ufuk Ulutas as a new envoy. Ulutas wrote in 2013 that Zionism as a “culturally/religiously racist” ideology and that it has “separatist content as well as expansionist policies, the plan committed many massacres, displacing millions of people. It physically and mentally tortured locals.” This is Turkey’s attempt to “mend fences” with Israel, by sending an envoy who accused Israel of “displacing millions” and has called Zionism “racist.”

It was Turkey that withdrew its ambassador from Israel several times over the past decade. Turkey’s regime helped support the Mavi Marmara that tried to break the blockade on Gaza in 2010. Ankara then ordered Israel to apologize for stopping the ship in a raid that led to ten deaths after Israeli soldiers were attacked.

Turkey was the main opponent of US President Donald Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Erdogan compared Israel to Nazi Germany at the UN in September 2019. Turkey gave Hamas leaders, including numerous wanted terrorists, a red carpet twice this year, leading to the US State Department condemning Ankara.

Reports in the UK suggest that Hamas plans terror attacks from Turkey and has done cyber attacks and that the Mossad concluded Turkey is a rising threat, according to the Times of London. In addition Turkey harassed an Israeli ship off Cyprus last year and the IDF has said Turkey’s threats could be a challenge, according to an annual report reported in January.

Ankara has made no moves to condemn Hamas terrorism or apologize for comparing Israel to the Nazis. While the UAE is celebrating Hanukkah and welcoming Jews, Turkey is increasingly antisemitic and extremely anti-Israel. Nevertheless the narrative from Ankara continues.

While Turkey is the largest jailor of journalists and all media in Turkey is pro-government, there are no articles in Turkey supporting Israel, but foreign newspapers are being fed information from Ankara about the “reconciliation.”  Turkey even pushed an article at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, arguing that Israel should ignore Cyprus water rights and gas claims and create a direct maritime jurisdiction with Turkey. This would give Turkey everything and Israel nothing and violate agreements with Cyprus and international law.

Turkey did this before in the spring, trying to slow down Israel’s energy ties with Egypt, Greece and Cyprus and France. Turkey claims that the US has obstructed its “geostrategic destiny,” according to an article at the Hoover Institution. The destiny appears to be one that includes occupying Syria, ethnically-cleansing Kurds and supporting attacks on Armenians, as well as hosting Hamas and fueling extremism from the Middle East to Europe.

The story of the “secret” push to mend-fences with Israel is all about Turkey trying to use media and its long propaganda arm abroad to harm ties between Israel, Greece, Cyprus and the UAE, making it appear Israel is conducting “secret” talks behind the backs of its friends. Turkey leaked this entirely to harm Israel’s relations and even sent maps to Israeli media to use, maps that ignore Cyprus and violate agreements Israel has.

Israel’s friends and partners in Cyprus, Greece, Egypt and the UAE are the opposite of Ankara’s regime. They don’t host Hamas and call Israel a Nazi country, they don’t bash Israel and they don’t appoint envoys known for claiming Zionism is racist. Ankara is one of the most hostile countries in the world to Israel outside of Iran. No other countries in the world besides Ankara and Iran give Hamas a red carpet and Turkey’s current leadership gives Hamas even more respect than Iran does, treating it with the respect of a foreign country.

Ankara has a long history of mobilizing media abroad through contacts to push its narratives, usually to get everything it wants and giving nothing in return. For instance Ankara speaks to friends and lobbyists in Washington to claim that it was “confronting Iran and Russia,” when in fact Ankara was working with Iran and Russia against US interests in Syria and buying Russia’s S-400s.

Now Turkey has pivoted to try to pretend it wants to compartmentalize certain issues with Israel, such as trade and maritime ties, as part of pretending the last year of chaos and extremism Ankara unleashed is behind it. Ankara wants more than anything to play the “good cop” for the new Biden administration, much as it worked to get support from Trump for invasions of Syria, Libya, and threats against Greece and Armenia.

But reality shows what is actually happening in Ankara. The regime is increasingly a far-right openly racist regime against Armenians and Kurds, and Jews are often objects of hatred for the Turkish-backed extremists that it has unleashed in Syria and other countries. If Turkey wanted reconciliation it wouldn’t use it to sabotage Israel’s alliances and isolate Israel and its own media, which is entirely pro-government, would support Israel.

Instead Turkey bashes Israel at home and tars Israel as a “Nazi” country. That is not how reconciliation works. The leaked stories about “secret” talks are designed only to muddle Israel’s relationships with other states in the region as part of an Ankara regime project which it openly says is designed to “liberate” Jerusalem from the “Zionists,” an ideology of religious extremism Ankara shares with Iran’s regime.

While countries like the UAE are welcoming Israelis and Jews and talking about tolerance, Ankara’s government jails dissidents and lashes out at minorities, spreading hatred and intolerance. In that toxic mix, there is no reality of mending fences, only a new anti-Israel envoy and an extremist authoritarian government in Ankara that wants Israel isolated so it can manipulate the incoming Biden administration. When Turkey apologizes for comparing Israel to the Nazis, then that might be evidence that it has changed. Ankara’s current regime will never do that.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/turkeys-regime-seeks-to-isolate-israel-using-reconciliation-propaganda-651911

The post Turkey’s regime seeks to isolate Israel using ‘reconciliation’ propaganda first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

ERBIL – Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer for assisting the Syrian Kurds has been accepted, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely has revealed.

The Israeli official noted that they “are assisting them through a number of channels,” and that advocating for them in discussions with the US, as the Syrian Kurds have been affected by the Turkish incursion into the neighboring country in October.

Turkey began an offensive against the Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria on October 9, while the US started to withdraw its forces from the region and let the NATO ally move into the area.

“Israel has received many requests for assistance, mainly in the diplomatic and humanitarian realm,” she said, according to Reuters. “We identify with the deep distress of the Kurds, and we are assisting them through a range of channels.”

She, however, did not clarify how the Jewish state would help the Kurdish nation in Syria, but pointed out that in their “dialogue with the Americans…, we state our truth regarding the Kurds…and we are proud of our taking a stand alongside the Kurdish people,” as cited by Harretz.

Source: http://www.basnews.com/index.php/en/news/middle-east/559164

The post Israel Assisting Syrian Kurds: Foreign Ministry first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

This is an opportunity for Israel and Turkey to recognize a new alignment of interests.

As the brutal eight-year Syrian Civil War winds down, uncertainty over what the future holds for the country is prompting new alliances while testing established ties. Both Israel and Turkey border Syria and have a strategic interest in the postwar settlement that emerges there. While there has been no shortage of disagreements between Israel and Turkey over the past decade, both share a desire to see stability across their Syrian borders. However, each holds a different set of priorities informed by distinct geopolitical and national security exigencies. How this plays out may have far-reaching consequences for stability in post-war Syria and should be of close interest to the United States—a long time strategic ally of both Israel and Turkey.

Through key military cooperation agreements, Israel and Turkey were historically allied since the 1990s in pursuit of a shared goal: to deter the Syrian regime from hostile actions against them by creating a bulwark on its southwest and northern borders. Israel’s limited direct participation in the Syrian Civil War focused on thwarting the Islamic State (or ISIS) threat and the Hezbollah-Iranian presence near its frontier with the Golan and Lebanon. Turkey has been intertwined with the theatre of war at a greater cost. The Turkish Armed Forces conducted two major cross-border ground operations into northern Syria within the span of two years: Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Olive Branch. Turkey controls Syrian territory in Afrin and its surrounding areas, and has amassed troops along the 566-mile border. Turkey received over 3.6 million Syrian war refugees since 2011, placing a burden on its already overstretched economy and sparking irreversible demographic changes. Israel received none, although it has been concerned that the refuge issue is destabilizing the regime in Jordan. Despite diverging wartime experiences, both Turkey and Israel share overlapping concerns about future stability in Syria.

First, a key shared goal is curbing the maneuverability space of armed non-state actors and militia groups. Indeed, in a Facebook post in March 2013, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that one motivation behind his apology to Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan over the Mavi Marmara incident was the situation in Syria: “Syria is disintegrating, and the huge advanced weapons stockpiles are beginning to fall into the hands of different forces…it is important that Turkey and Israel can communicate with each other.”

According to Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior research fellow at the Israel-based Institute for National Security Studies, while Syria has not developed into an area for cooperation between Turkey and Israel, neither has it become an area of competition between the two states. This is due mainly to diverging immediate priorities: Israel is focused on conflict triggers in southern Syria while Turkey is interested in the future of northern Syria.

Turkey views the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region in northeastern Syria as an existential threat and seeks guarantees of the territorial integrity of the Syrian state. Turkey seeks to halt the territorial gains made by the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian militia linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an insurgent group the United States and Turkey list as a terrorist organization.

Israel’s support for the independence referendum held in Iraqi Kurdistan on September 30, 2017 put it at odds with Turkey. According to a Turkish foreign-policy expert that I spoke with, Ankara understands the Israeli approach to be “smaller is better” when it comes to its neighbors, meaning that the fragmentation of Syria into statelets or autonomous territories would serve Israel’s national security over a unified and stronger Syrian state.

Turkey’s fears may be exaggerated. Israel’s own experience with cross-border terror attacks means it can fully understand the challenges facing Turkey in Syria. Lindenstrauss adds that given the United States decision to withdraw from Syria, it is unlikely that Israel will take a strong position on the issue of Kurdish autonomy there.

Israel’s priority is dismantling the threat of Hezbollah on its northern border, making it paramount that steps are taken to oust Iranian forces and Shia militias out of Syria. With the winding down of the Syrian conflict, the fear is that eyes will invariably turn back to the group’s stated enemy of Israel. Moreover, as its engagement within Syria diminishes, Hezbollah will likely augment its position in Lebanon.

A related second goal is that Turkey and Israel both wish to limit Iran’s influence in Syria. Israel’s recent raids in Syria, including a September 2018 strike on ammunition depots in western Syria, were a clear signal of Israel’s intention to maintain its military dominance in the region, ignoring fears of backlash from Russia. After an attack on an Iranian arms depot near Damascus International Airport in January, Netanyahu announced that Israeli forces had attacked “Iranian and Hezbollah targets hundreds of times.”

Although Turkey is part of a coalition that supports Iran, it is weary of protracted Iranian influence over Syria, as well as its hegemonic aspirations over the wider region. Turkey has sought to place itself as a check on Iranian expansionism but has encountered setbacks after failing to oust the Assad regime.

The Israeli leadership perceives itself to have few allies in its bid to counter the entrenchment of Iranian-Hezbollah power in Syria. But this is an area where Turkey and Israel share a common interest. According to Nimrod Goren, the head of Mitvim (The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies), “Israelis tend to overestimate Turkey’s relations with Iran, and Turks tend to overestimate Israel’s relations with the Kurds in northern Syria.” Overcoming misperceptions and building mutual trust—however difficult that may seem in the short-term—will benefit both states as the security architecture of Syria takes shape.

Third, both states support a process of political transition to a postwar settlement. Applying a common pragmatic lens, both Israel and Turkey recognize that Bashar al-Assad has reconsolidated regime authority in territories lost to opposition forces in most of the country and that there are no alternatives to his leadership.

Obstacles to Realigning Cooperation

Despite complex shared interests on the future of Syria, as well as cooperation on natural resources, investment and trade, a number of factors at the regional and domestic levels complicate short-term realignment between Israel and Turkey.

The current situation is highly dependent on what Russia has in store for the beleaguered country of Syria. Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, Turkey maintains an uneasy relationship with its Arab neighbors and long-standing rivalries create a historic check on Turkey’s influence. Turkey has tilted toward Russia in recent years in a bid to re-calibrate its foreign-policy isolation that spiked due to its policy missteps during the Arab Spring. To regain strategic relevance over the future of its Syrian neighbor, Turkey continues to edge toward Moscow, a relationship that has tested its longstanding status as a NATO member.

In parallel to Israel’s enhanced relationship with the United States under the Trump administration, it has also cultivated ties with Russia in a bid to check Iranian influence. Putin has significant ties with Russian expatriates and investors within Israel and Israel’s continuing favor toward the Russian Church has warmed bilateral ties. Russia has assured Israel that it will work to deter Iran or Hezbollah from opening a new front with Israel. However, the extent of Russia’s influence over the Assad regime is not straightforward, making any promises to Turkey and Israel far from given.

At the same time, Israel’s relations with the Arab Gulf states has improved considerably in the recent period, and a reduction in anti-Israel rhetoric has signaled a turning point. Israel maintains strong trading relations with many states despite a lack of formal diplomatic relations. Part of this new web of relations is Egypt, which has increasingly been vying to reinsert itself as a regional player. By acting as an interlocutor with Hamas, Egypt has effectively removed a key claim Turkey held as a candidate for peace broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Egypt in the picture, Israel has learned it can rely less on Turkey as a middleman to influence the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

Complicating matter further, obstacles to closer ties are ubiquitous at the domestic level in both states. Turkey is under increasing pressure to find ways to correct its economic downturn and recent municipal elections have underlined the divide within opinion across the country. The current AKP administration, preoccupied with domestic stability, may well be tempted to distract its disgruntled heartland through posturing against Israel. At the same time, Israel is riddled with the problems of an increasing unilateral approach to policy making buoyed by the Trump administration, which has degraded Israel’s dovish factions. It is too soon to tell whether the current post-election period in both states will relieve some of the public pressure and encourage cooperation on shared strategic interests.

A further cause of uncertainty is how regional states will react to the looming announcement of the “deal of the century” to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, conjured up by chief negotiator and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Turkey will find it more difficult to work with Israel if the plan spells the end of the two-state solution.

Turkey and Israel have cooperated in the past when mutual interests superseded short-term differences. At the moment, sufficient reasons for closer relations do not appear to exist. A Turkey expert who use to work in Tel Aviv said recently, “Only God knows” what the future holds for Turkey and Israel relations.

However, according to Goren, a scenario where Israel and Turkey launch a channel of policy and strategic dialogue regarding Syria will deliver benefits for both sides that are currently “missing out due to their bilateral crisis.” The ending of the Syrian war will provide a timely opportunity for Israel and Turkey to recognize a new alignment of interests. The United States can play a productive role to bring the two states closer together to facilitate stability in Syria, particularly against growing Iranian influence. It is clear that the most likely outcome is that despite vitriolic rhetoric to the contrary, increasing normalization and cooperation between two powers at security, political and economic levels will become a necessary theme over the next period.

Burcu Ozcelik is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Ozcelik’s research interests involve the contemporary politics of the Middle East, focusing on Turkey, Iraq, Syria and transnational Kurdish politics. Her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, RUSI, Government and Opposition, Sada Middle East Analysis (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Lebanon’s Daily Star, Syria Forward, the Cairo Review of Global Affairs and the Journal of the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies.

Image: Reuters

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/syrian-civil-war-changing-turkish-israeli-relationship-61327

The post The Syrian Civil War is Changing the Turkish-Israeli Relationship first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

• The complex, and often toxic, Israel-Turkey relationship
• Report: Israel, Turkey working to re-establish normal ties

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo credit: TUMAY BERKIN/REUTERS AND MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

The ongoing war of words between Israel and Turkey is likely to become harsher as both countries head to the polls in the coming months, analysts told The Media Line.

Officials recently traded heated accusations, with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of overseeing a military that “massacres women and children in Kurdish villages;” this, after Ankara’s foreign minister called Netanyahu “a cold-blooded killer of modern times, responsible for massacres of thousands of innocent Palestinians, bombing children on beaches.”

Selim Sazak, a U.S.-based expert on Turkey, contends that the negative dialogue will continue as the leaders of both states are liable to face pressure from the right during their political campaigns. “It’s election talk, it’s that time of the year,” he asserted to The Media Line. “I would expect both [Netanyahu] and Erdogan to double down on the nationalist rhetoric.”

Erdogan’s AK Party will compete in municipal elections slated for March and depends on support of the staunchly right-wing MHP. The two parties formed a coalition in last year’s parliamentary vote but have since often been at odds.

For his part, Netanyahu, who is seeking re-election in an April national vote, has been dogged by legal woes and is under fire for accepting a ceasefire with Hamas following months of violence along the Gaza Strip border.

Muzaffer Senel, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Şehir University, similarly predicts that the prevailing discourse will intensify. “The sides are bullying each other,” he explained to The Media Line, “as both leaders are populists that made this [conflict] for [public] consumption.… There is a political will behind this.”

Ties between the two countries had already deteriorated sharply over the summer, with Erdogan labeling Israel an apartheid state and Netanyahu slamming the Turkish president for supporting Hamas, which is deemed a terrorist group by the West.

That spat—which unfolded on Twitter—led to the reciprocal expulsion of diplomats, an example of how verbal disputes can have tangible implications.

Nevertheless, Shira Efron, a researcher and special adviser on Israel at RAND, does not envision a total break in bilateral relations. “Worse crises have occurred between the two countries and ties persisted,” she wrote in an email to The Media Line. “[At] the diplomatic level, I don’t foresee meaningful change without [an unlikely] shift in the political leaderships or progress [also unlikely] in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which [in] the past has been associated with improvement in Israeli-Turkish affairs.”

The recent announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump of a prospective pull-out of American forces from Syria has complicated matters between Jerusalem and Ankara.

While Washington has sought reassurances from Erdogan to not attack U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, the proposed quick withdrawal could provide the opportunity to do so. Turkey views the Kurdish YPG in Syria as an extension of the banned PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is thus widely designated a terrorist group.

The drawdown of American troops from Syria also will allow Iran to increase its influence in the country, something that Netanyahu’s government vehemently opposes but is more palatable to Ankara.

“Now that the U.S. is withdrawing, and Erdogan is the person that talked Trump into it, it’s made life more difficult for Israel,” Sazak opined.

Another sticking point is an agreement expected to be finalized this year for a gas pipeline stretching from Israel to Greece and Cyprus, two nations that have longstanding fraught relations with Turkey.

Simon Waldman, a Middle East analyst at the Istanbul Policy Centre, told The Media Line that plans for the 7$ billion project may not be actualized. “There is still much that needs to be done, and not just administrative issues but also to determine feasibility,” he stated.

Despite the diplomatic standoff, trade between Israel and Turkey remains robust, with companies urging their respective governments to not interfere even amid the tough talk.

“As long as [Netanyahu and Erdogan] are in power, the personal differences, personal animosity is way too strong,” Sazak concluded. “But this might not necessarily thwart the much-needed and profitable business-to-business cooperation, and there are people working towards this.”

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/War-of-words-Israel-Turkey-on-collision-course-576909

The post War of Words: Israel, Turkey on collision course first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.