How Turkey and Israel benefit from the current crisis

[bemildred]

I will comment:
a.) Has some interesting bits.

b.) I think the argument made is flawed by questionable equivalences: Turkey now vs Turkey in the 1990s, Turkey now vs Israel now, Israel now vs Israel in the 1990s. Change has been rapid.

c.) Nevertheless, I think the framing: that "rationally" this escalating dispute makes little sense, that it is driven by politics is OK .

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Many analysts suggested that all this could have been avoided if Jerusalem had issued an official apology and agreed to pay compensation. Indeed, an apology may well have eased the escalating tensions. But apology and compensation are not the only conditions set by Ankara to repair its ties with Israel: Prime Minister Erdogan has also made it clear that unless Israel lifts the Gaza blockade itself, relations cannot return to what they were. In other words, either Ankara believes it can force Israel to lift the blockade or it simply does not to want make up. Interestingly, Ankara brought up the blockade condition about the same time reports on the possibility of an Israeli apology surfaced.

The Mavi Marmara affair is the most recent episode in an ongoing Middle Eastern show produced and performed by Ankara and, perversely, welcomed by many in Israel. Moreover, neither side seems to be interested in an improvement, since both governments benefit politically from the current state of affairs. In both societies, nationalist-conservative sentiments are on the rise, and the government of neither country seems willing to take the risk of disappointing such sources of support.

For example, in early September, Turkish media were fixated on an article from an Israeli daily, reporting the allegations that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was working on a plan for retribution against Ankara. According to reports, Lieberman proposed supporting the PKK Kurdish separatists fighting against the Turkish government. Even after he denied the allegations, the government continued to issue statements accusing the Israeli government of supporting terrorists. Pro-government and conservative media outlets used phrases like “Israel arming and training the PKK” and aired footage of the Israel Defense Forces, Mavi Marmara and the PKK in the same scene. Unsurprisingly, according to a recent opinion poll, Israel tops the list of “biggest potential external threats for Turkey” − whereas 92.4 percent said Israel was the country in the region they thought would be willing to, or currently did, support terrorist actions against Turkey.

In fact, for Turkish politicians, Israel is a veritable gold mine, and everyone wants to capitalize on it. Even the leader of the center-left, main opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accused the Erdogan government of not doing enough to counter Israel. On the defensive, the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu “accused” Kilicdaroglu of speaking like an Israeli . In other words, critics risk being labeled as “Israel advocates” if they oppose the AKP’s handling of the dispute.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/how-turkey-and-israel-benefit-from-the-current-crisis-1.387129