Turkey rejecting Israeli compensation as a matter of principle

You probably understood all along that Turkey's rejection of Israeli compensation offers for the Mavi Marmara incident had nothing to do with money. I did too. It's not that they want us to pay ten times as much as we're willing to pay in compensation. It's that they want us to grovel. For now, at least, I don't believe that will happen.

The reason for the deadlock in compensation talks between Turkey and Israel is the latter’s insistency in redressing the damages of the Mavi Marmara victims as an ex gratia payment and not as a result of its wrongful act, a senior Turkish government official has said.

“In our first meeting [the Israelis] showed no opposition to this. But in the second meeting, they intended to give an ex gratia payment as a form of reparation because they fear compensation [as a result of their wrongful act] will set an example for other cases, which is not a concern to us,” Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç told Ankara bureau chiefs late on July 23. Arınç is leading a Turkish team composed of diplomats and legal experts negotiating the compensation issue with the Israeli government.

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“The amount of money is not the problem,” Arınç said. “There are two problematic areas. The first one is that Israel should accept that it’s paying this money as a result of its wrongful act. Nothing less than this will be accepted. And second, we are waiting for them to realize our third condition of cooperating with Turkey in making life conditions easier for Palestinians. We are not talking about the amount of money as our first two conditions have not been met,” he added.

“We are not going to rush for the money. Israel has to accept its wrongful act. Otherwise we will not say ‘yes’ to them,” he said, adding that the amount of money to be given to the families of the victims will be automatically calculated in accordance with criteria.

 So much for another great Obama diplomatic breakthrough.