Turkey has remained quiet about the Israeli airstrikes in Syria over the last few days. Not that there is anything surprising about this silence as Turkish and Israeli delegations meet in Jerusalem for the second time today [May 6], since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized on March 22 for the deadly May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident and set the stage to normalize relations between the two countries. While Ankara’s silence signals that Turkey is determined to end the bad blood over the Mavi Marmara incident, there is no guarantee that the two sides will ever trust one another like they used to.
Therefore, there may be two ways to interpret Ankara’s silence over the Israeli airstrikes in Syria for now — that it’s all about the timing, coinciding with the ongoing compensation talks in Jerusalem and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s upcoming visit to the White House scheduled for May 16. It was after all US President Barack Obama who brokered the apology from Netanyahu in his first visit to Israel, and that US Secretary of State John Kerry has already expressed their disapproval about Erdogan’s announced potential visit to Gaza toward the end of May. In other words, one may need to take caution before attributing too much significance to this silence. What is striking in all of this diplomatic politicking is how the Erdogan government’s swinging pendulum in the friend or foe relationship with Israel makes Ankara’s assertive “principled policy” be questioned.
