Etiket israel

Barak’s visit defuses tensions between Turkey and Israel

News, etc. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s visit to Ankara over the weekend somewhat relaxed the confrontation between the two countries that flared up last week when the Turkish ambassador to Jerusalem was snubbed by Israeli officials who summoned him to protest a television serial aired in Turkey. Although President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Chief of Staff General Ilker Basbug absented themselves from the capital, Barak, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Oguz Celikkol, the Turkish ambassador to Israel gave warm photo-ops for the journalists during the visit. Barak said Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon had “expressed his apologies for the improper behavior” shown to Celikkol last week and emphasized that the relations between the two countries will continue “according to universally accepted diplomatic rules.” Barak also met with his Turkish counterpart, Vecdi Gonul and after the meeting the Turkish minister said during their deliberations they reached complete agreement of opinion that the tensions and confrontations in the Middle East should be eased for the sake of stability and peace in the region. Reminding that Turkey was one of the first countries that extended recognition to the state of Israel, Gonul said, “Cooperation between our two countries in many fields is continuing on a satisfactory level.” “In the field of defense cooperation we have completed 13 projects and six more projects are still continuing,” said Gonul. He listed some of the projects as the modernization of F4 and F5 Turkish Air Force fighter aircraft and M60 Turkish Army tanks. Turkey’s plans to develop unmanned reconnaissance planes with Israel have also reached a new phase, Turkish defense minister said. He explained that certain systems on these planes are jointly manufactured by Israel and Turkey. Answering a question by an Israeli reporter that Iran’s nuclear plans are creating […]

Television serial flares up confrontation with Israel

News, Etc. It was again a television serial aired almost a year after the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s televised row with the Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos that poured more oil on the fire intensifying the “war of words” between Ankara and Jerusalem. This time the setting of the scene in the serial “Valley of Wolves” was a safe house used by the Israeli Embassy where a Turkish kid kidnapped by the Israeli agents was being kept. Polat Alemdar, the pistol packing hero of the serial raids the house, pumps few bullets into the head of the Israeli agent and the blood splashes on the wall where the spectators see a Star of David, Israel’s national emblem, stained in red. Danny Ayalon, the Israeli deputy foreign minister, summoned the Turkish ambassador Oguz Celikkol to tell him that the serial consists of anti-Semitism in a “new package” and such material was not fit to be aired even in an enemy country let alone in Turkey which is a strategic ally of Israel. He said the episode presented the Israelis and Jews as “baby snatchers,” and threatened not only the relations between the two countries but also the lives of Jewish minority members living in Turkey. The Turkish media reports criticized Ayalon’s behavior during the meeting claiming that he refused to shake hands with the Turkish ambassador and made him sit on a lower seat than his own. At this stage Prime Minister Erdogan joined in and accused Israel of violating United Nations resolutions by bombing Gazza. “Does the Israeli government support peace or not? The other day they bombed Gazza again. There was no reason for it. They are using weapons of mass destruction like phosphorus bombs. They want to say we do whatever we want, nobody can stop […]

Israel, landmines and Turkey’s past sins

Niyazi Dalyanci The government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan agreed to pull back from the parliament floor the draft legislation that would grant a 44-year lease to the company that clears more than 650,000 land mines that dot the 510-kilometer, 350-meter wide swathe of land along Turkey’s border with Syria. The operation for clearing the 210 square-kilometer prime agricultural land from mines in exchange for such a long period of land lease on top of the five years estimated to complete the process, led to a debate in which relations with Israel, global land grabbing by rich nations to ensure supply of food and Turkey’s past sins committed against her non-Moslem minorities, got all mixed up thanks to the uniquely preposterous nature of current Turkish political scene. As of May 2004, Turkey became an official party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that requires clearing of all land mines on its territory by the year 2014. But how did the seemingly unrelated topics such as global land grabbing for food, relations with Israel and most peculiarly issues like exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece, discriminatory practices against the non-Moslem communities in Turkey since the 19’/20s were thrown into the heated political debate? Israel entered the scene when the Turkish media reported that one of the likely companies to be awarded the mine clearance contract was Israel’s TAHAL that would enter the tender with Turkey’s Calik group where Berat Calik, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is employed as the CEO. The reports immediately led to dissenting voices questioning the political propriety of leasing such a big swathe of land on the Syrian border to an Israeli company considering the continuing explosive situation in the Middle East. Some commentators insinuated that Erdogan had probably made promises behind the scenes […]