How can there ever be a lasting peace between a Zionist state and another nation where the president thinks that Zionism is a crime against humanity?
When Turkey and Israel decided to normalize their badly strained ties in December 2016, after more than six years of downgraded diplomatic relations, the first thing they did, as the protocol dictates, was to appoint ambassadors to each other’s capital. With a theoretical new chapter opening in troubled relations, Turkey and Israel appointed two prominent career diplomats, Kemal Ökem and Eitan Na’eh, respectively.
This author’s pessimistic guess at the time was: “The diplomats may be willing, but with (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdoğan’s persistent Islamist ideological pursuits, they would seem to have only a slim chance of succeeding”. In essence, Erdoğan had pragmatically agreed to shake hands with Israel, but his ideological hostility to the Jewish state and his ideological love affair with Hamas had not disappeared.
After less than a year and a half, the Turkish and Israeli embassies in Tel Aviv and Ankara are once again ambassador-less. The loveless date has turned into a tussle.
“A crime against humanity,” Turkish prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, shouted after clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters caused the deaths of dozens of demonstrators. Erdoğan described the incidents as a “genocide” and Israel as a “terrorist state.” “No matter from what side, whether from the United States or Israel, I curse this humanitarian plight, this genocide,” he said. Then what would naturally happen happened.
Turkey recalled Ökem “for consultations” and told Na’eh to leave the country “for a while.” Na’eh was shown on Turkish television undergoing an airport security check in public view in an apparent plot that aimed to degrade him in the eyes of the public. In return, Israel asked the Turkish Consul General in Jerusalem to temporarily to leave the country.