Renewal of US interest

As violence engulfed Palestine when the intifada erupted (December 1987) the enemies of Israel, but also its friends, reacted strongly to the way it dealt with the rising. ¹ The Turks, always mindful of the Arabs’ reaction, slowed down the pace of relations with Israel, which had been steadily increasing since the mid 1980s. But as the decade drew to a close the beginning of the Arab-Israeli peace process led Ankara to eagerly resume the bilateral dialogue. The 1993 Oslo Israeli-Palestinian agreement and the hopes it raised for a peaceful co-existence between the two peoples spurred an even faster pace in the development of bilateral relations, which began to spread into many fields. There were many important considerations that made the Turks seek closer relations with the Israelis in the beginning of the 1990s. A major factor was the desire to acquire advanced weapons and military systems without any hindrances on account of human rights violations. Another was the need for increased sharing of intelligence concerning the activities of the Kurdish guerrillas and the support they received from the Kurds in Northern Iraq and President Assad of Syria. Furthermore, in the wake of the Gulf War the Turks had come to the conclusion that relations with Israel would strengthen their hand when dealing with Assad and the other Arab leaders. ² Of course, a major goal continued to be Ankara’s wish to boost its support in the US. ³ Actually, according to a number of senior Turkish officials, the need to find public allies in Washington who would help advance Turkish interests was the main driving force. ⁴ In short, the peace process was an unexpected bonus for the Turks, just as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had been a decade earlier. The new phase in Arab-Israeli relations greatly helped Turkish rulers to liberate their relations with Israel from self-imposed constraints. These were dictated primarily by Turkish concern not to provoke the Arab regimes, but also at least to some extent by domestic considerations, as Turkish public opinion was very sympathetic toward the plead of the Palestinians.