Israel-Turkey crisis will take time to fix, former PM says

10 months ago 40

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s stance in the ongoing Middle East crisis is a “disgrace” for Turkey, whose relations with Israel will take a lot of time to be fixed, Israeli former prime minister Yair Lapid said.

In an interview with the Greek public broadcaster (ERT), Lapid, former premier and current opposition leader, lashed out against Erdoğan about his support for Hamas in the Middle East conflict.

The Turkish president has described Hamas – considered a terrorist organisation by the West – as a “liberation group” fighting for Palestine’s freedom and that Israel is “completely out of its mind” in the ongoing war.

The Israeli-Turkish relations have never been stable as both countries have competed for dominance in the region.

However, before the current war, a significant rapprochement took place, with the two countries vowing to collaborate in the field of energy through joint energy drillings in the eastern Mediterranean and energy transfer networks to Europe.

But after the war, the rhetoric became hostile again.

“We are not going to get lectures and directions about human rights from Erdoğan. The fact that he stood up with Hamas, a terrorist organisation that kills innocent people, is a disgrace for Turkey and, of course, caused a crisis between Israel and Turkey that will take a long time to fix”, Lapid said.

Israel’s former PM explained that an “Iran-Turkey axis” in close collaboration with “proxies” are trying to destabilise the wider region and “steer the emotions in the Middle East that will cause only pain and destruction”.

Tehran has so far not been directly involved in the conflict, although many analysts express their conviction that Iran has provided Hamas with military equipment all these years.

In a recent interview with Euractiv, Lebanon’s former defence minister Yacoub Sarraf projected that a regional escalation would be possible but ruled out a direct involvement of Iran.

“Iran may have provided the know-how, the training, some of the financing, some of the parts, but I do not think they took any direct part in the operations or conflict [due to the major difficulties in coordination between fighters of different backgrounds],” Sarraf, who served as defence minister between 2016 and 2019, said.

“Iran will not react if not attacked,” he added.

For its part, Greece is trying to politically take advantage of the situation to further approach Israel against Turkey.

But Athens’ stance is careful, as it does not want to affect an ongoing dialogue with Ankara to stabilise bilateral relations.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has strongly criticised Erdoğan for his support toward Hamas, saying that Ankara is “on the wrong side of history”.

Greece and Turkey faced severe tensions over their maritime borders in recent years, but a couple of months ago both sides decided to calm things down and return to dialogue.

However, it is still unclear how the ongoing Middle East conflict will affect the course of the talks. For Athens, discussions should not be affected.

“The fact that we disagree on this issue [Hamas], I believe that it should not affect the context of the Greek-Turkish dialogue and the important steps of progress that have been made in recent months. We remain focused on our positive agenda and timeline,” Mitsotakis recently said.

(Sarantis Michalopoulos | Euractiv.com)