A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry said June 15 that Israel’s decision to pursue an internal investigation on the May 31 raid on the Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza fell short of Turkish and international expectations. The statement follows a June 14 announcement by the United States that it will support Israel’s internal probe, with a U.S. State Department spokesman saying Israel has the institutions and capabilities to conduct a credible, impartial and transparent investigation.
By not supporting the Turkish demand for an international inquiry, Washington has put Ankara in a difficult position. Turkey must choose between maintaining its credibility as a growing regional power by taking a hard line against the Israeli raid, or taking a credibility hit for the sake of preserving its long-standing though frayed security and diplomatic ties with Israel.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had previously said that his country did not trust Israel to conduct an impartial review of the incident, and Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Turkey would not rule out severing ties if three demands — an international probe, a public Israeli apology, and an end to the Gaza blockade — were not met. Turkey has been seeking American support to press the Israelis into heeding these demands, but Ankara realizes that Washington has to balance between Turkey and Israel. If the United States cannot be relied upon to pressure Israel on meeting the demands, Ankara will have to find some lever to do so itself.
One such lever may be military and intelligence cooperation, which Israel has historically relied upon. Turkey has already downgraded cooperation, and rumors have surfaced that Israeli intelligence operatives may be expelled from a radar post on Turkish soil near the border with Iran. The threat of cutting off such security ties completely could be enough to push Israel into accepting at least some of Ankara’s conditions, without resorting to the much more serious severing of diplomatic ties, which Turkey hopes to preserve. Turkey’s influence in large part stems from it being the lone power in the region with ties to nearly everyone, including powers antagonistic toward one another, such as the Israelis, the Syrians and the Iranians.
Ankara has seen its influence grow significantly in recent years, both regionally and internationally. As such, it believes its credibility hinges on extracting concessions from Israel to demonstrate that its concerns are not easily dismissed. This is all the more important because Russia and France have also supported the Israeli move toward an internal probe, which undermines the Turkish claim that their stance has broad international support. This is the same position Turkey was put in when Turkey and Brazil were the only members in the U.N. Security Council to veto a fresh resolution on Iran sanctions, and Turkey has since been battling a perception spreading among U.S. policy circles that Turkey is an “unreliable” partner that has turned its back on the West. Now that the United States and Israel have apparently dismissed Turkey’s demand for an international probe, the question moving forward is whether Turkey will risk its credibility in backing off this particular demand, or if it can manage to save face by using its intelligence cooperation with Israel to pressure the Israeli government into making an overt concession elsewhere.
