Turkey, with a side of reconciliation

The big story in Sunday’s news is the reconciliation between Israel and Turkey, ending nearly three years of frayed relations following the Mavi Marmara incident, which saw nine Turkish citizens killed in clashes with IDF soldiers aboard a ship bound for Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday spoke to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the phone as US President Barack Obama was about to board Air Force One for Amman. Netanyahu expressed Israel’s apologies for the incident and offered to pay damages to a humanitarian fund for the families of those killed, Maariv reports. 

The paper quotes Netanyahu’s Facebook announcement, in which he wrote that “the fact that in Syria the crisis is intensifying moment by moment was my main consideration.”

“Syria is disintegrating,” the prime minister said, noting the dangers of Damascus’s chemical weapons stocks falling into the hands of terrorist groups. “It is important that Turkey and Israel, which border Syria, can communicate with one another.”

Israel Hayom reports that “The name of the game is Assad” and adds that the pressure came in part from Obama’s demand for cooperation among Middle East actors in this regard. It quotes a senior source in the Prime Minister’s Office saying that the reconciliation was effected “out of understanding and desire to end the crisis with Turkey and not from American pressure.” 

“Israel apologized for operational mistakes that took place on the Marmara” because of the crucial nature of good relations between Israel and Turkey in light of Syria, the source was quoted saying.

Haaretz calls Obama’s role in bringing the two former allies back together mere “mediation,” and notes that delegates from both countries will meet after Passover to hammer out the reparations agreement. The paper’s editorial remarks that Jerusalem and Ankara “must now act decisively to restore ties between them and their peoples. The bitter aftertaste of the affair will not disappear overnight, but the heads of the two countries have already shown that they can shape public opinion, and so we may expect that they will know how to heal the trauma.”

“As both countries have learned, public declarations, the attitude of the media, and mutual gestures, have huge power to destroy ties or to make them rock-solid,” it writes.

Yedioth Ahronoth appears to be the only paper that sent someone to Istanbul to report on developments there. Itamar Eichner reports from Turkey, having spoken to a tour guide who misses the Israeli groups that he once escorted around the country. Burak Urtak tells the paper that ever since the May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, he’d be asked in hotels and markets, “Where are the Israelis? When will they return?”

On hearing of the reconciliation, and “when I understand that it’s real, I jumped for joy. That’s it, the crisis is over. You can return immediately. We missed you very much,” he tells the paper. “Most Turks don’t care about politics. The problems are made by the leaders, not by the peoples.”

The paper also quotes members of the IDF unit involved in the Marmara incident as saying there was nothing to apologize about and that “we didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t feel that we did something bad, we did the right thing, I am not ashamed of it and we have nothing to apologize about,” a Flotilla 13 soldier identified as N says.

The Flotilla 13 fighters also spoke to Maariv, and one called the apology to Turkey a “cold shoulder” from the government after what he called the unit’s “very good operational achievements” aboard the Marmara.

“After all, we endured serious trauma.”

Israel Hayom also quotes members of the center-left and the opposition praising Netanyahu’s decision to make amends with Turkey after years in the cold. Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovich said, in rare praise of the prime minister, that he did the right thing by reconciling with Erdogan.

“Turkey is a regional power with which relations are very important to Israel,” she is quoted by Israel Hayom saying. “Even if the apology to the Turks was done with a heavy heart, it’s good that it was done.”

Meretz party leader Zahava Gal-on says she appreciates Netanyahu’s apology to Ankara and praises the normalization of relations with Turkey (whether or not she intends to immediately return to the beach there is unclear).

In other news, Haaretz reports that Finance Minister Yair Lapid said Israel is in worse financial state than he expected. In becoming finance minister last week, Lapid learned the answer to his campaign question “where is the money,” the answer being there is none.

“My first year in the Finance Ministry will be devoted to shrinking the overdraft. I would have liked to deal with happier matters, but I believe that I am most required where it is difficult,” he is quoted in an article that got buried on Page 10.