“Turkey has to solve the problem of Saleh al-Arouri [a Hamas leader exiled from the West Bank who lives in Turkey]. It is unthinkable that a NATO member should allow terror acts from its territory.” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said this in a conversation with Al-Monitor last month, after returning from his trip to the United States on Oct. 21. He said it even before the Shin Bet revealed Nov. 27 the involvement of what it called the “Hamas command center in Turkey” in planning terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and in training the bombers.
In an interview with IDF Radio after this disclosure, Minister of Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz called on the United States and NATO to apply pressure on Turkey to stop supporting terrorism. Senior officials in Ankara with whom I spoke following these remarks expressed concern that any official Israeli request to NATO in the same vein would only erode the bilateral relationship even further. From my own investigation into the matter, I learned that Israel did not make such an official request of NATO, at least not yet.