Nothing will ever be the same between Turkey and Israel. Not after Israel’s raid on the aid flotilla bound for Gaza left nine activists dead — several of them Turkish citizens. However, as disastrous for Israeli-Turkish relations as the raid was, the once-constructive alliance between Israel and Turkey is too important to be allowed to lapse without a rescue effort, and it might still be partly salvaged with help from the U.S.
Over the last fifteen years, Turkey has become a valuable market for Israeli business, and until the last year and a half its military opened its airspace for training Israeli pilots and permitted overflight of its territory when Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear facility three years ago. Turkey’s rapprochement with most of its neighbors has made it a potential diplomatic mediator with Syria, a role that it was performing until Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s incursion in Gaza, derailed negotiations. Close relations between the two countries’ military establishments have made possible the exchange of technologies and sale of weapons. All of this is now in danger of vanishing or being severely reduced in the aftermath of the raid.
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