Turkey-Israel Relations

תקציר

Turkey-Israel Relations highlights the unique relationship between Turkey and Israel in the Muslim world. This world has arguably become more fraught because the “greatest danger the world faces in the twenty-first century is an Iranian nuclear arsenal”, and this danger may have become more ominous by virtue of the recently concluded Iran Nuclear deal. On the other hand, whilst most Muslim-majority nations have declined to recognise Israel, Turkey was the first Muslim-majority nation to do so. This paper examines the secular roots of modern Turkey, the shifting sympathies of Turkish leaders under the guidance of a number of Islamist theorists, and the current status of the Turkey-Israel relationship under the direction of the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who assumed the presidency in 2014. Emerging essentially as a continuation of the Welfare Party, the AKP’s pre-election platform was crammed with promises to re-orient the nation toward the West, to respect a secular Republic, and to depart from political Islam in favour of a secular, conservative democracy. At the same time, many saw the issue of Turkish-Israeli relations as a benchmark for measuring the sincerity of the AKP’s promise to instantiate a secular, Western-oriented government. At the present time, relations between Turkey and Israel show that Turkey’s stance regarding Israel reflects a complex mix of religious ideology and political expediency, which entails the possibility of a burgeoning relationship with terrorist groups like Hamas. Hence, as this article suggests, the most optimistic forecasts are likely to indicate that this state-to-state relationship is doomed to remain fragile.