U.S. Jews, though reeling, look to preserve Turkish ties
By Ron Kampeas . June 15, 2010
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- U.S. Jewish leaders talk in pained, hushed tones
about the "red lines" in the Turkey-Israel relationship -- the ones
they say the Turkish leadership has crossed and the ones they say they
won't.
The fragile consensus emerging from the establishment Jewish
organizational leadership is that the relationship it has cultivated
over the decades with Turkey is worth preserving -- at least for now.
"There are lines that mustn't be crossed, and we have seen over the
last weeks those lines aggressively crossed," said Jason Isaacson, the
director of international affairs for the American Jewish Committee, a
group that has taken a lead role over the decades in outreach to
Ankara. "The dilemma is to honor the legacy of Turkey's hospitality
and integration of its Jews in its society."
Isaacson and others referred to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's likening last week of the Star of David to a swastika.
"It is going to be a challenge for them to walk back into a zone of
responsibility -- but they must, and we will continue to make that
case very forcefully to our Turkish contacts," Isaacson said.
The Turkey-Israel alliance reached the breaking point May 31, when
Israeli commandos intercepted and boarded the Mavi Marmara, a
Turkish-flagged ship that was part of a flotilla that aimed to breach
Israel's embargo of the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Hamas
terrorist group.
Nine Turkish passengers, including one Turkish American, died in the
subsequent melee. Seven Israeli soldiers were injured. Competing
accounts -- each backed by video outtakes -- blame each side for
starting the violence.
Turkey-Israel tensions have been brewing since Israel's 2009 war in
the Gaza Strip; some say they began even earlier. In 2009, Erdogan
condemned Israel's invasion of Gaza and upbraided Israeli President
Shimon Peres at an economic conference in Davos, Switzerland that
January. Turkish state television subsequently ran a TV series that
depicted Israelis as bloodthirsty.
Daniel Pipes, who directs the Middle East Forum, says the roots of the
crisis date to Erdogan's election in 2003. Erdogan's Islamist AKP
Party is challenging the military, the redoubt of secularism in
Turkey, Pipes says, and that when Israel is depicted in a negative
light, the AKP weakens the military.
"It appears they no longer fear the military, and they are now are
unleashing their might," Pipes said of the AKP. "We mustn't give up on
Turkey -- AKP is the problem."
Turkey's behavior also has taken hits from the left of the pro-Israel
spectrum, which otherwise had criticized Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's government for its handling of the raid.
Turkey "has been too quick to try to make political gains for
themselves at the expense of regional stability," Jeremy Ben-Ami, who
directs J Street, told JTA.
Israel's oldest Muslim ally, Turkey in recent years has buffered the
Jewish state -- and Western interests -- against Iranian expansionism
in the region. Israeli combat pilots are able to practice drills in
Turkish airspace that would not be possible over Israel's compact
territory, and Israel's Navy counted on Turkey as an alternate harbor
in case of all-out war.
In return, Turkey has benefited from the deep, broad reach of Israel's
intelligence services, particularly relating to the activities of the
PKK Kurdish terrorist group. It also has relied on the American Jewish
community to make its case in Washington; the Turkish Diaspora has
never matched its Greek and Armenian counterparts for sustaining
nationalist passions overseas.
A critical test for Turkey's Jewish proxies in Washington has been
their successful effort to quash recurring resolutions that would
recognize Turkey's Ottoman-era massacres of the Armenians as a
genocide, as most experts already do. The Armenia resolution is a rare
source of tension between Jewish lobbying groups, which stymie the
measure to protect Israeli and U.S. interests in the region, and
Jewish Congress members, who recoil at denial of a genocide.
But pro-Israel insiders, speaking off the record, say now that they
are considering keeping their hands off the resolution. The version
currently circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives has passed
the Foreign Affairs Committee.
It stands little chance of reaching the floor, however, as long as
Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the House speaker; Pelosi has closely heeded
directives from the Obama and Bush White Houses to bury the resolution
as long as Turkey remains a key U.S. ally in the region.
Passage would be disastrous, said Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who tracks Turkey, as
Erdogan would be able to make his Islamist, anti-Western case to the
Turks with an "I told you so" argument.
"We would lose the Turks," Cagaptay said. "And we have not lost Turkey
-- we have lost the steering wheel."
Already the relationship is fraught: Turkey canceled planned joint
military exercises with Israel in the wake of the flotilla raid, and
on Monday it dismissed Israel's planned query into the incident as a
sham.
With the exception of the Zionist Organization of America, which has
called for an investigation into Turkey's role in the fiasco,
pro-Israel groups in Washington are not willing to take commensurate
leaps and directly target Turkey. Instead, they are targeting the
Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or the IHH, the charity with
ties to Erdogan's AKP that helped fund the Mavi Marmara excursion.
In the House, Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) wrote Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton asking her to list IHH as a terrorist group because of
its alleged affiliation with Hamas. Five House members from New York
accepted a petition Monday demanding the same action that had been
organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and
garnered 20,000 signatures.
The Senate leadership of both parties is gathering signatures for a
letter to President Obama asking him to consider such a designation.
Placement on a terrorist list freezes a group's U.S. assets and makes
it illegal to fund-raise in the United States.
By not targeting Turkey directly, Jewish groups want to avoid
antagonizing the entire Turkish political establishment; Erdogan may
yet be vulnerable because of his mishandling of the important U.S.
relationship, among other reasons. And there are still redoubts of
friendship to Israel, in the military and Foreign Ministry.
Another factor is Turkey's Jewish community.
"American Jews who have been longtime supporters of Turkey must keep
alive the people-to-people dialogue, considering that over 20,000 Jews
live in Turkey today," said a lobbyist who has represented both Jewish
and Turkish interests and still travels frequently to Turkey.
Cagaptay warned that the relationship, while worth salvaging, would
never be the same.
"The days of Turkey watching Israel's back in a tough neighborhood,
and of Turkey counting on Israel to represent its interests in
Washington, are over," he said.
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Ron Kampeas is JTA's Washington bureau chief.
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