Israel-Turkey détente ‘a matter of days,’ official says

A senior Israeli official on Sunday said the rapprochement negotiations between Jerusalem and Ankara were over 95% complete, and that an agreement to reestablish normalized ties between the two countries could be announced in “a matter of days.”

“Almost everything has been finalized. We’ve concluded over 95% of the negotiations, there are only few details remaining. It could be a matter of days,” the official said according to the Hebrew-language Ynet website.

The official noted the political leadership in both countries was eager to put an end to the downgraded diplomatic ties over the past six years.

“There is no reason this won’t happen,” he said.

According to a TV report on Channel 1 Sunday, Israel and Turkish negotiators are set to meet in a European city on June 26 for the final round of talks.

The last remaining gaps in the negotiations that have centered around a compromise regarding the Israeli demand to shut down Hamas’s Istanbul headquarters, was reached in recent weeks, the official told the TV station.

He said positive steps towards normalization had been taken by Turkey recently, most notably Ankara’s lifting of its NATO veto on cooperation with Israel. He also said that for the first time, a number of senior Turkish foreign ministry officials attended the Israeli Independence Day celebration at the Ankara embassy in May.

The restoration of bilateral ties would come six years after a deadly May 2010 raid on a Gaza Strip-bound Turkish ship attempting to breach the blockade on the coastal enclave, in which 10 Turkish citizens were killed during a melee with Israeli commandos. The incident led to a nosedive in already tense relations between the two countries. Turkey demanded an immediate apology, compensation for the victims’ families and the lifting of the blockade on Gaza before normal relations could resume.

Israel refused and only issued an official apology some three years later, in what many thought would trigger a warming in ties, but tensions soared again the following year when Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza in response to Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli towns and cities.

After years of bitter recrimination and inflammatory rhetoric, the two sides began secret talks last year to seek a rapprochement, with another round taking place in February in Geneva. Talks on compensation in the past reached advanced stages, according to reports, but one of the main hurdles has remained the lifting of the Israeli blockade.

Over the weekend, Turkey’s new Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, stretched out a cautious hand of reconciliation to regional foes, saying he wanted no permanent tensions with Black Sea and Mediterranean neighbors after serious diplomatic ruptures with Egypt, Israel, Russia and Syria.

“Israel, Syria, Russia, Egypt… we cannot have permanent enmity with these countries which border the Black and Mediterranean Seas,” Yildirim said in his first major interview with Turkish reporters, quoted by the Hurriyet daily.

During a Friday press conference, Yildirim confirmed that Turkish and Israeli diplomats were working on a solution for normalization, with the lifting of the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory as the key condition.

“I don’t think the remaining period will be very long” until a result for normalization is achieved, he said.

Agencies contributed to this report.