RUTHFULLY YOURS

While the latest twist in the trial of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert upstages the investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom, a different type of scandal is unfolding that is worthy of far greater worry.

But with the Israeli media more interested in discussing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s blocking of Twitter and YouTube, and broadcasting his sudden onset of laryngitis during an election rally, the real story involving Turkey has barely been reported.

On Thursday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave the green light to Turkey to complete construction on a hospital in Gaza, which it began building in 2011 by smuggling materials through illegal tunnels. The hospital will be run jointly by Turks and Palestinians.

Ya’alon’s permission grants Turkey the right to transfer 500 trucks of building materials and 70 trucks of electrical and communications equipment into the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave.

This gesture suggests that recent reports in the Turkish press according to which normalization with Israel is soon to resume are accurate. Indeed, for the past few days, Turkish newspapers have referred to a number of developments indicating that the four-year break in relations between Jerusalem and Ankara is on the brink of a resolution.

Ties between Turkey and Israel were severed in 2010, when a Turkish Gaza-bound flotilla with armed pro-Palestinian activists was intercepted by Israeli commandos. In the ensuing fray, during which the Israeli soldiers were viciously attacked with various weapons, nine activists were killed. Turkey never took responsibility for its part in the incident. Israel, on the other hand, has continued to try to repair the damage. At the behest of U.S. President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even issued a personal apology to Erdogan, and has been negotiating a compensation package for the families of those killed during the raid.

Erdogan keeps upping the ante, however, not only demanding greater sums of money than Israel originally agreed to pay, but setting as a condition for a settlement the listing of the siege on his terrorist buddies on Gaza. Nevertheless, Netanyahu has not rescinded his offer to pay compensation — a misnomer for acts of self-defense — due ostensibly to reasons of regional realpolitik.

This has not been working in Israel’s favor. Turkey under Erdogan has become increasingly hostile to its former ally. And it has a lot more to gain from good relations with the Jewish state than the other way around. In fact, after a four-year hiatus, Israelis are starting to plan vacations to Turkey again. This is a source of great revenue for the Turkish tourism industry, because Israelis spend lots of cash when they go abroad. Nobody is more keenly aware of this than Turkish shopkeepers.

And yet, if Erdogan’s AK (Justice and Development) Party does well in Sunday’s local elections — which the reliable Turkish think tank, KONDA, is predicting — Erdogan will be bolstered towards next year’s general elections. What this means, among other bad things, is that he will feel vindicated in his anti-Israel stance, and is not disposed to softening it. Such is Erdogan’s version of regional realpolitik — rather different from that of his Israeli counterpart.

And Netanyahu knows it.

This may be why the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office was quick to deny claims in the Turkish media, as well as those of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Wednesday, that, as part of a nearly done reconciliation deal, Israel had agreed to pay $21 million in compensation fees, that the embassies in both countries were on the verge of reopening for business, and that Erdogan was mulling a visit to Israel in the coming months. Given Ya’alon’s official okay for the transfer of Turkish goods into Gaza, this denial is not terribly plausible.

But this isn’t the worst aspect of the characteristically imbalanced negotiations between Israel and this, or any other, Islamic neighbor.

No. Far more appalling is the fact that, while the current one-sided deal is being forged, Turkey is going full speed ahead with its prosecution of Israeli military figures connected with the raid.

Indeed, the eighth hearing in the kangaroo-court trial against former Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former Navy commander Vice Admiral Eli Marom, former Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin and former Air Force intelligence head Avishai Levy has just begun in Istanbul.

These four high-ranking officers were put on trial for murder in November 2012, in absentia. If convicted, the prosecution will seek 18,000-year sentences for them.

In other words, no matter what meetings are taking place “behind the scenes” between Israeli and Turkish negotiators, and regardless of Israeli concessions geared at ending a crisis of Turkey’s making, Israel gets nothing out of the whole mess but further condemnation.

Talk about being a turkey.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”