Turkey and the Palestine Question

To a great degree, modern Turkey was born from the demise of the Ottoman Empire; the monarchical regime was transformed into a republic on 29 October 1923 and it underwent a cultural revolution that shifted its orientation from the Muslim world to the West. Nevertheless, republican Turkey under Kemal Ataturk did not disassociate from the Middle East. Turkey was one of the signatories of the Sadabad non-aggression pact in 1937 between Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Concerning Palestine, Turkey’s involvement had started early on with the opening of a consulate in Jerusalem in 1925. According to Turkish Foreign Ministry Archives, Turkish consuls had a keen interest in Palestinian affairs and reported developments in Palestine to Ankara.

When the Partition Plan was put to the vote in November 1947, Turkey voted against it, along with the Arab states. Then, it joined the United States and France as member of the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) that was established by Resolution 194 in December 1948. UNCCP was tasked to assist the parties in achieving a final settlement of all questions outstanding between them, including the delimitation of borders, Jerusalem and the Palestine refugees. This role demonstrates both Turkish interest in Palestine and the international community’s recognition of the country as an honest broker.

Initiation of Diplomatic Relations with Israel

Turkey recognized the state of Israel in March 1949 and opened a diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv shortly thereafter. It did so in the context of a pro-American foreign policy after deciding that the new state did not seem to have pro-Soviet tendencies. Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952 and conducted a pro-western foreign policy during the Cold War. In 1955, it signed the Baghdad Pact with Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.

In this context, Turkey was one of the non-Arab countries and peoples in the periphery of the Middle East (Turkey, Iran, Iraqi Kurds and Ethiopia) with whom Israel established secret relations. This relationship was referred to as the Periphery Pact. Israeli-Turkish relations entailed military and economic cooperation and resulted in the visit of Israel's prime minister David Ben Gurion to Ankara in 1958.

Nonetheless, Turkey was critical of Israel’s belligerent relations with the Arabs in the 1956 Suez war and downgraded its representation in Tel Aviv, and it condemned Israel in the 1967 June War. Even more importantly Turkey did not allow the United States to supply Israel with arms in the 1973 October War through its territory, while permitting the Soviet Union to use Turkish air space to deliver arms to Egypt and Syria.

Turkey’s Relations with the Palestinians

After the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, the Palestinians became full-fledged actors on the international relations stage. Turkey was concerned with getting the support of Arab states in its Cyprus policy, and so in the 1960s and the 1970s, it opened up to the Arab, Muslim and Third World countries. In 1969 it became a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference, which was established as a reaction to an arson attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque by an Australian-born religious Zionist, and it voted with Arab countries on UN Resolution 3379 in 1975, equating Zionism and racism. (When this resolution was revoked by the General Assembly in 1991, Turkey abstained.) The Turkish government under the social democratic politician Bülent Ecevit allowed the PLO to open a diplomatic office in Ankara in 1979. Both the Israeli mission and PLO diplomatic mission were upgraded to embassy status in 1991, an indication of Turkey’s balanced approach toward the two peoples.

Despite conducting a pro-American policy during the Cold War, Turkey diversified its trade options. It established trade relations with the Soviet Union in the 1960s and the Arab world in the 1980s, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, five Turkic states gained independence. As a result, Turkish foreign policy was more assertive in the Islamic and Turkic world.

Domestic interest in Palestinian affairs was substantial. During the 1970s, many Turkish socialists joined Palestinian camps in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan because they saw the Palestine struggle as the harbinger of a worldwide socialist revolution. For Islamists, on the other hand, Palestine was part of their religion-based ideology culminating in a large Jerusalem demonstration in the conservative Turkish city of Konya in 1980 and a smaller meeting in the outskirts of Ankara in 1997. (Both meetings created tensions with the state, which perceived these events as a cover for a fundamentalist challenge to the secular system of Turkey.)

Regardless of domestic ramifications of the Palestinian issue for Turkey, sympathy for Palestinian aspirations was quite strong both at governmental and societal levels. Support for Palestine came from both center left and center right politicians as well as extreme left and extreme right political organizations in Turkey. When in Algeria, PLO President Yasir Arafat declared an independent state of Palestine in 1988, Turkey under the premiership of center-right politician Turgut Özal recognized Palestinian independence.

Balancing Relations with Palestine and Israel

In the 1990s, Turkey initiated close strategic cooperation with Israel, which was already grounded in the secret relations of the 1950s. Turkey tried to keep a balanced approach between the Israelis and the Palestinians: Turkish leaders visited the Palestinian territories whenever they visited Israel without much talk on trade with the former but definitely including substantial exchanges with the latter. During this era, Turkey widened its relations with Israel to include economic, cultural, academic dimensions in addition to its military cooperation, while bilateral trade reached 5 billion dollars by 2015. 

Rise of the Justice and Development Party in 2002

Turkey’s wide cooperation with Israel was short-lived, however. When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, its leadership strongly opposed Israeli operations in Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Israel in 2005 and began to normalize relations with Israel, most recently by hosting the visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog to Ankara in 2022. However, the AKP and Erdoğan had strong links with Hamas, and any Israeli actions against the Palestinians was strongly condemned. Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal visit to Ankara in 2006 signaled stronger relations between Hamas and the Turkish government, both of which had Muslim Brotherhood affinities, the former formally and the latter indirectly.

The Mavi Marmara incident marked a low point in Israel-Turkey relations. In 2010, the Mavi Marmara ship was part of the Freedom Flotilla consisting of eight ships trying to break the naval blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip. Israeli commandos boarded the Turkish ship and killed ten Turkish citizens. Pressured by US President Barack Obama, the Israeli prime minister eventually apologized to Prime Minister Erdoğan for the attack in international waters.

Palestine as a National Interest

Although both Turkey and Israel were interested in normalizing relations between the two countries, the Palestinian issues hung like the sword of Damocles above both countries. Israel’s repeated attacks against Gaza were particularly challenging for the Turkish government: Hamas governed the Gaza Strip since 2007 and due to their close relations, the AKP leader had a particular interest in the Strip. Israel’s assaults in 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014 and other smaller skirmishes were all condemned by the Erdoğan administration. In many ways, Palestine has become a national issue for the AKP government and a source of mobilization for its base as well as other sections of society, precluding improvement of relations with Israel as long as the Palestinian issue remains unresolved.

The latest attempt at normalization with Israel came to a halt in 2022 and was reversed with the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Israel’s massive response, which entered in July 2024 its tenth month, has been described by many experts as a genocide of the Palestinian people. In November 2023, Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv but the Turkish embassy remains open. A more serious decision was trade restrictions imposed by Turkey on Israel which included cement, steel, iron, jet fuel, aluminum, and steel pipes among other items. And on 3 May 2024, Turkey decided to cut all trade with Israel, which is quite a radical step. Whether such a decision is sustainable in the long run remains to be seen.