For the first time since 2018, the two countries will exchange ambassadors and consuls. This resumption of relations is the final twist in heated relationships between the two countries in recent years.
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Drawing a line on their disputes, Turkey and Israel announced, Wednesday, August 17, the complete restoration of their diplomatic relations. “Improvement of relations will help to deepen the links between the two peoples, to expand economic, commercial and cultural ties and to strengthen regional stability,” said Israeli Prime Minister Yaïr Lapid in a press release published after the interview that he had with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In reality, the rapprochement was at work for a little over a year already: Ankara had benefited from the coming to power, in June 2021, of a new coalition in Israel to soften the tone against the Hebrew State.
heated reports
First step: in March, President Erdogan received his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, for a state visit, the first at this level for fourteen years. In May, Mevlüt Cavusoglu was welcomed in Israel and June, Yaïr Lapid, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, visited Ankara in order to thank the Turks for their cooperation, which, according to him, had to thwart Iranian attacks programmed against Israeli tourists in Istanbul.
This resumption of relations is the final twist in the stormy relationships that Israel maintain and Turkey have in recent years. Formerly flagship Muslim ally of the Hebrew State in the region, Ankara broke her relations with Tel Aviv for the first time after the Israeli assault, in 2010, of the Turkish humanitarian ship Mavi Marmara who sought to break the Israeli blockade in Gaza, The Palestinian enclave, and during which ten Turkish activists had been killed.
Organized by IHH, an Islamic NGO close to the Islamo-conservative government, the humanitarian operation was supported at the highest level of the Turkish state. The following year, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador.
The apologies of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, in 2013, will not change anything. In 2016, the two countries finally found an agreement: Turkey abandoned legal proceedings against responsible Israeli soldiers and the Hebrew State paid $ 20 million (19.7 million euros) to Ankara.
Reconciliation was short -lived. In May 2018, during the move of the American Embassy of Tel Aviv in Jerusalem, which marks the recognition by the United States of the annexation, illegal in the eyes of international law, of the Palestinian part of the Holy City by the ‘Hebrew state, the Israeli army kills more than sixty Gazaouis during a protest demonstration.
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