“Cautious optimism” — that is how Israeli musician and diplomat Yinon Muallem defines the climate of tension that currently reigns between Israel and Turkey, three years after the bloody clash on the high seas between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mavi Marmara Turkish ship carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to Gaza.
The business and tourism sectors in the two countries are waiting for a signal from the nervous pair of leaders who have waged an arm-wrestling match ever since that bitter morning in which nine Turkish activists were killed. Diplomatic ties between Turkey and Israel were downgraded, and the former friendship was replaced by the language of threats and defamation. Israeli tourists, who once thronged Turkish cities in the hundreds of thousands, frequented other countries.
