Israel Matzav

Turkey postpones reconciliation talks with Israel

The 'great triumph' of President Obama's trip to Israel and Turkey appears to be in doubt, as Turkey has postponed reconciliation talks with Israel that were scheduled to open Tuesday in Ankara.

A few hours after the families of Marmara fatalities announced they would not drop their suit even if they receive compensation, it turns out the meeting between the Israeli and Turkish delegations, who were set to discuss several central issues for the return to normalization, will be put off till April 22, at the request of the Turks.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç explained that the reason for the postponement was the trip he and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan were to take to the Kyrgyz Republic. “We contacted the Israelis and it was agreed we would postpone the visit (of the Israeli representatives),” he said to reporters after a Turkish cabinet meeting, according to the newspaper, Hurryiet.

Yossi Ciechanover, Former Foreign Ministry Director General, and national security advisor Major General (ret.) Yaakov Amirdor, head the Israeli team, which had been scheduled to leave for Ankara to meet with the Turks for talks regarding compensation to families of the Marmara fatalities and the suit against IDF soldiers and officers who stopped the flotilla.  

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Ahmet Varol, a journalist present on the Marmara, said the Turkish were demanding Israel provide a time frame for removal of the blockade in Gaza, and that it allow Ankara to examine the process. “Nobody wants compensation, and although the apology has diplomatic meaning, it carries no meaning for the victims.”

During a Sunday press conference with the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, US Secretary of State John Kerry pleaded with the Turkish leaders to fully renew diplomatic relations with Israel. Kerry said that it was important that Israel and Turkey agree to completion of the reconciliation agreement, but emphasized that the US would not impose a deadline on the two countries to return to normalization.

Jonathan Tobin calls Kerry's trip to the Middle East an exercise in futility. But Tobin's assessment makes it sound even worse.

Kerry’s stay in Ankara was represented as a follow-up to President Obama’s supposedly brilliant triumph in brokering what is still widely referred to as a “rapprochement” between Israel and Turkey. But the details of the talks he held with the Turkish foreign minister gave the lie to the administration’s boasts about the benefits of its persuading the Israeli prime minister to apologize to his Turkish counterpart, since the Turks are making it clear they have no intention of abiding by any agreement to normalize relations with the Jewish state. Similarly, the idea of shuttling between Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Abbas, when the latter has already demonstrated his lack of interest in the sort of talks without precondition that Obama said was the only path to peace, is, at best, a waste of the secretary’s time. That Kerry is inaugurating his tenure at the State Department by conducting two visits that give him no opportunity to succeed is bad enough. But it does more than illustrate how out of touch he is with reality. By diving into problems that he can’t fix but can make worse by raising expectations of American pressure on Israel, this will not only bode ill for his tenure in his new post but also offers him opportunities to create mischief where none need have been found.

In Turkey, the secretary was confronted by a Turkish determination to use the much-celebrated conversation between Netanyahu and Prime Minister Erdoğan as an opening to try and extract more concessions from Israel about their Hamas ally rather than a way out of a nasty quarrel. Kerry should not have gone to Ankara without a prior Turkish commitment to return their ambassador to Israel, as they had agreed during the call with President Obama. By leaving Turkey without anything near a promise to do so expeditiously, Kerry and the United States were humiliated. Having done so, it is difficult to imagine why the Turks will ever make good on their promises since the end of the embargo on the rogue Islamist state in Gaza is not something that either the U.S. or Israel can or should agree to even if it would make Erdoğan happy.

As far as the shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Ramallah, any decision to engage in such a public exercise should have been predicated by foreknowledge that the Palestinians were willing to end a boycott of negotiations with Israel that has lasted for more than four years. But even after the president publicly chided Abbas that preconditions about settlements should be no obstacle to talks, the PA has followed up by coming up with a different reason for not talking. Now they are saying that Israel must commit to using the 1967 lines as the starting point for new talks on borders.

While one can’t completely blame them for resurrecting a precondition that Obama himself memorably called for in his May 2012 ambush of Netanyahu in Washington, doing so is the equivalent of a neon sign saying the Palestinians don’t want to talk and wouldn’t agree to a peace deal even if they did.

Maybe Kerry is trying to purposely look bad so that people forget how bad Hillary was before she tries to run for President in 2016.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, negotiations without preconditions, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish obsession with Israel

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:33 PM