Erdogan’s approach to Israel is intensifying

Of Costa Rapti

Arts are being processed. In the background of an economic crisis that, among other things, brought the pound to lose 44% of its value last year, it just makes sense for Tayyip Erdogan’s country to close geopolitical fronts that are now an unnecessary luxury and look for, primarily in its neighborhood, potential partners in fields of energy and investment.

But this would be a one-sided reading, because the interesting mobility of the last few days in terms of Turkey’s relations with the United Arab Emirates first is not just a presumption of “weakness” (let alone “isolation” …) of the neighbor, but at the same time a proof of the flexibility, the room for maneuver and the dynamism of the country and its leaders.

The roots of rivalry

The United Arab Emirates and Israel are not two countries for Turkey: they have been its most important regional rivals so far. Turkish-Israeli relations (which in the 1990s had acquired the character of close strategic cooperation with the blessings of the United States) began to be poisoned in 2009, when Tayyip Erdogan verbally attacked then-Israeli President Simon Peres during Davos Forum. They deteriorated rapidly the following year, with the killing of 10 Turkish activists during an Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara ship off the Gaza Strip, and have not been able to truly recover since. In fact, they sank again in 2018 with the recall of ambassadors from both sides, sparked by Turkish reactions to the killing of Palestinian protesters during the riots caused by Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. The “protection” relationship that the Islamist government of Erdogan has developed with the Palestinian organization Hamas is for Israel the pre-eminent “thorn” that prevents the restoration of relations. Or, to be more precise, of the diplomatic-diplomatic relations, because the economic transactions of the two sides, paradoxically, never stopped growing.

Abu Dhabi, on the other hand, is the real “capital” of the Sunni monarchy bloc, which has met with little covert hostility to Erdogan’s ambitions to rule (in close cooperation with the Emirate of Qatar and local Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the Middle East). . In fact, the vendetta between the Turkish president and the powerful man of the Emirates, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, is personal, as the latter is suspected of financing the coup attempt in Turkey in 2016. However, the two sides have found to support rival camps wherever their ambitions have intersected – most notably the Libyan crisis.

The motivations for rapprochement

And yet Mohammed bin Zayed was the one who welcomed the Turkish leader in Abu Dhabi on Monday, in return for hosting the Emirati successor to Turkey last November. At that time, the foundations were laid for the creation of a Joint Investment Fund with reserves of 10 billion dollars, while in January followed the announcement of an agreement for foreign exchange of funds, amounting to more than 5 billion dollars, in the national currencies of the two sides.

During Erdogan’s two-day visit this week, co-operation deepened. 13 memoranda of cooperation were signed, while the start of negotiations for a comprehensive economic partnership agreement was announced, with ambitions for partnerships in the field of defense industry and the exchange of information.

The fact that the United Arab Emirates, as a basically naval power, is in a hurry to ensure at least the favorable neutrality of Turkey in terms of its re-involvement in the Yemeni crisis, in order to secure its gains in control of its sea routes, is a parameter of the observed reversal. The fact that France is also Abu Dhabi’s closest ally in the West is to be assessed, while the expected lifting of Iran’s isolation, with the forthcoming revival of the international agreement on its nuclear program, necessitates the search for regional counterweights. The deeper overall cause, however, is the relative US withdrawal from the Middle East and the rearrangement of correlations across the Eurasian field. On the intra-Arab front, al-Awla’s agreements last year marked the re-reconciliation of Qatar with its Gulf Cooperation Council neighbors, who in 2017 imposed a blockade on the emirate and would likely have intervened militarily if not accelerated. military mission. (Qatar, a “champion” of liquefied natural gas, has just upgraded its relations with the United States, which is in a hurry to find alternative energy sources for Europe).

Looking at gas and Central Asia

From the United Arab Emirates to Israel, as the next “station” of Turkish openings, the course was reasonable and expected. After all, Abu Dhabi was the first Arab capital to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state under the Abraham-Trump Accords.

Ankara’s flirtation with Israel has intensified in recent months, especially since Benjamin Netanyahu stepped down.

Any opportunity arose, from the arrest of an Israeli couple in Istanbul on espionage charges in November to the death of Israeli President Herzog’s mother and the insult to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid by Coronavich Janoufalou and Janoufal. Tsavousoglou used it to communicate with their counterparts, in a show of good feelings.

Isaac Herzog’s scheduled visit to Ankara on March 9 marked the moment when these feelings were translated into action. After all, the disputes over the Turkish-Israeli rapprochement are great: Ankara’s ambition is to build a gas pipeline from Israel to Turkey, which will strengthen its role as a neighbor and bypass Athens and Nicosia, while Ankara and Ankara desire to coordinate their movements for the accession of the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Both sides, of course, want to send the message that they are not abandoning their friends so far. That’s why the Israeli president arranged to visit Athens and Nicosia before heading to Ankara, while Erdogan’s adviser Ibrahim Kalin and Undersecretary of State Shedet Onal were in Ramallah to assure him that he would not leave.

But the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority happens to be Hamas’s main rival, and the Turkish officials’ mission suggests a change of alliances, in line with reports that the ousted Islamist leaders’s neighbor is about to be ousted.