The outcome of the Israeli elections, signaling that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will again lead the government, will probably have no effect on Israeli-Turkish relations, which are likely to remain chilly. Neither side has any political incentive to change course.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan finds himself better placed with his tough rhetorical line against Israel. However, he is attacked for actually conspiring with Jerusalem. Members of Turkey's opposition parties sometimes accuse his Justice and Development Party (AKP) of having a secret deal with the Jewish state. They claim Erdogan's tough rhetoric and feverish temper toward the Israeli state conceals the AKP's true intentions. "Why did you allow NATO to build a radar station in Kurecik?" asked Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition party (CHP), for example. "If you're really against Israel, you stop the radar operations in Kurecik. That's for Israel's security."
Faruk Logoglu, Kilicdaroglu’s foreign policy chief, told Al-Monitor that “It’s not that we have a fight with Israel, or that we’re against Turkey cooperating with NATO to strengthen Israel’s security needs in the region. What we try to emphasize is that Prime Minister Erdogan is not honest with either the Parliament or the public as to why this radar system has been built in Kurecik.”
Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid's leader and a well-known former journalist, is rumored to be in the mix for a big cabinet position, perhaps foreign minister. Even if Lapid actually decides to enter the coalition government with Netanyahu and becomes the next Israeli foreign minister, his secular and liberal approach does not mean that he will take the first flight to Ankara to deliver a personal "apology" to Erdogan for the deaths of nine Turks in May 2010 on the Mavi Marmara flotilla off the coast of Gaza. To the contrary, Lapid sounds no different when it comes to issues directly concerning Israel's security and he has made no comments so far — publicly — as to what he thinks about the Mavi Marmara incident or relations with Turkey.
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