Robert Tivyayev is an Israeli MP and the head of an Israel-Turkey parliamentary committee. Despite the fact that the committee’s operations are temporarily suspended, Tivyayev hasn’t abandoned his attempts to contribute to the normalization of the relations between the two countries. Tivyayev agreed to share his point of view on the conflict and the current state of Israeli-Turkish relations with a VK correspondent.
- Mr Tivyayev, are there any official parliamentary contacts between Israel and Turkey at the moment?
- The Israeli-Turkish Friendship association under the Turkish parliament officially ceased to exist a few months ago. According to Turkish law, this association can exist only when at list one coalition MP participates in it, and after the recent crisis they all left this organization. In turn, I had to suspend the activity of our Israel-Turkey parliamentary committee. I didn’t want to dismiss it as I hope that one day the relations between our countries will ameliorate. Yes, all parliamentary contacts have stopped, but it doesn’t mean that there are no contacts on a government level, and I take an active part in them.
- Is it true that a ‘warming up’ between Turkey and Israel may happen very soon?
- I can’t promise you that it will happen soon, but there is some certain positive progress.
- Is this progress connected to the activities of Netanyahu’s special envoy David Meidan?
- You see… any mediator is just an instrument. We need to understand what caused the conflict in the first place to finally settle it. I’ll try to explain: Turkey is one of the 20 of the world’s most developed countries. It is a democratic state, a NATO member. Despite all that, it spent a decade trying to get into the EU – and failed. And this reluctance of the EU to accept Turkey can’t be explained by anything short the fact that Turks are Muslims. In response to this position of Europe Turkey started positioning itself as the leader of the Muslim world. And pretty soon it became clear that Turkey can’t maintain this position unless it gets involved into the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ankara offered Israel its mediatory services in our conflict with Palestinians. We were used to having Egypt for a super-reliable mediator, so we rejected this offer. And that is the when this seed of conflict was planted.
- But Israel had no choice as Turkey took up a preconceived pro-Palestinian position…
- You are mixing up the cause and effect here. Turks know their history well, they remember, that Arabs were the ones helping English troops to drive them out of the region in 1918. They could have been even more friendly mediators for us as the Egyptians were. But, as I’ve said, we rejected the offer, and Palestinians took it – and that is why Turkey took up pro-Palestinian position. And then the matters simply got out of hand: anti-Israeli propaganda, Gaza flotilla, ‘Mavi-Marmara’ incident… Anti-Israeli rhetoric won Erdogan new votes of support in the Islam world, so he used it again and again. But after his trip to Egypt he came to his senses: he realized that the Arab world expects much more decisive steps against Israel than criticism from his part, steps he’s not ready to take. He remembered that our general interests in the region correspond and that it is necessary for Turkey to have at least normal relations with Israel. So, as you see, Erdogan’s visit to Egypt is the key to understanding the current state of affairs. After this visit Turkish political figures use anti-Israeli rhetoric much less. Of course, it is all not over yet, and we are not saints here too. But the both sides managed to take some steps towards each other, and that’s what matters. For example, Israel made no objections of recent US weapons sale to Turkey, and Turkey makes no comments on Israeli military strikes against terrorists in Gaza Strip
-But Turkey is still not going to change its conditions for normalization of its relations with Israel?
- No, it is not. It still demands apologies for ‘Mavi-Marmara’ incident.
- Don’t they understand that Israel can’t take this demand seriously? Israeli soldiers had to act in order to protect themselves…
- Of course, Turkish diplomats are wrong to demand unilateral apologies, and there is a great deal of Turkey’s fault in the incident. Nevertheless, we are also not flawless. We could have acted more diplomatically right after the incident. We should have expressed our regret on Turkish citizens’ death. And now both sides don’t want to ‘betray their principles’. The notion of principle is very important for Turks. The situation is pretty grave, but, as they say on the Caucasus, ‘if neighbors want to fight – they will find a pretext, if they want to make peace – they will also find a pretext’. You know that even after the crisis our economic ties didn’t reduce, on the contrary, they expended. And this is the most accurate indicator: businessmen of both countries wouldn’t have risked making big deals unless they were sure in our future. Relations with Turkic world are very important for us, and thus we wish to return our relations with Turkey to their normal friendly state as soon as possible.
- But experts say that one shouldn’t underestimate Turkey’s influence over other Turkic countries…
- You shouldn’t underestimate it either. Turkey is not only their most important economic partner, they shape their government systems after Turkish model. A lot of students from this countries study in Turkey. And when these young people return home they make good political careers pretty quickly, and you know how the university affects one’s personality. Turkey has a great influence on these countries’ young generations.
- So who could you characterize current state of Israeli-Turkish relations?
- Relations with Turkey are stabilizing, but not as quickly as I would want them to.
Interview by Peter Lukimson, exclusively to VK
