Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, known for his provocative statements against Israel, said on Friday that Turkey is interested in improving its relations with Israel but its policy against Palestinians is a “red line.”

Erdoğan added that if Netanyahu wouldn’t be the prime minister, then Turkey’s ties with Israel would be different. “We have problems with the Israeli leadership,” Erdoğan claimed. “If they [the government headed by Netanyahu], wouldn’t control the top positions, our relationship could be very different.”

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev offered last week to serve as an intermediary between Israel after both played key roles in Azerbaijan’s recent victory over Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, Axios reported.

According to the report, senior Israeli officials said that Aliyev raised the issue of improving Israel-Turkey ties in a recent call with Erdoğan and the Turkish leader responded positively to the idea.

Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov also recently told Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi that Azerbaijan thinks it’s a good time for Israel and Turkey to mend fences.

Earlier this month, Turkey appointed Ufuk Ulutas as the new Turkish ambassador to Israel, which was viewed as an attempt to improve relations with Israel ahead of US president-elect Joe Biden entering office.

However, a senior Israeli minister told Israel HaYom that the situation with Turkey is completely different than the situation with the four Arab countries that recently normalized ties with Israel due to Turkey’s support for Hamas.

“The fact that Hamas’ headquarters is located in Turkey is very problematic. It severely impedes everything,” the minister said, adding that as long as Turkey supports Hamas, there won’t be an improvement in the ties between the two countries.

Former Israeli ambassador to Turkey (between 2003-2007) Pini Avivi told Israel HaYom that if Erdoğan said he wants to improve relations with Israel then he meant what he said.

“I wasn’t surprised by Erdogan’s desire for better relations with Israel,” he said, “but by the fact that he said it out loud, which is incredibly significant.”

“In Erdogan’s constellation of considerations, he is led by two central tenets – the first is ‘neo-Ottomanism’ and defending all Muslims. The second is to continue maintaining with Israel, to the greatest extent possible, not the past security relationship and joint military exercises of the past, but at least the whole matter of economic relations, which have grown in scope from $1 billion to $5.5 billion.”

“I can understand that the situation in which Erdogan finds himself in Syria is affecting him. He, similar to Israel, is very concerned about the Iranians, and in his case it’s important to note that it’s Sunni against Shiite. It’s true there hasn’t been a war between Iran and Turkey for 300 years, but there is a rivalry there.”

Avivi added that Erdogan can be trusted to mean what he says. “If he speaks, then he means what he’s saying. Beyond that, I think the Arab countries that moved toward normalization with Israel also affected him, along with the issue of the American sanctions.”

Israel and Turkey’s relationship deteriorated over the past decade, despite the two countries maintaining strong commercial ties, with both countries expelling each other’s ambassadors in 2018. Erdoğan has repeatedly made derogatory statements about Israel and has also hosted Hamas leaders in Ankara and even granted citizenship to 12 Hamas terrorists, one of whom has been designated by the US as a terrorist and has a $5 million bounty on his head.

Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel in 1949 and the two countries maintained warm ties until Erdogan’s rise to power.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)