When Israeli commandos violently raided the Freedom Flotilla in May 2010, something extraordinary happened in Gaza specifically: A deep sense of loss, but also pride. It was a time when the current generation experienced real solidarity emanating from a Muslim country, exhibited with such resolution and willingness to sacrifice.
Nine Turkish nationals were killed then, but in Gaza, they instantly became ‘martyrs’ who joined an ever-expanding list of Gaza’s own martyrs.
Although Israeli wars continued unabated after that incident, Gazans subsisted on the assurance that Turkey was on their side. But recently, the vigour in Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tone has been significantly reduced — almost overnight.
Two years ago, during Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, Erdogan, then the Turkish prime minister, had accused Israel of deliberately killing Palestinian mothers. Speaking to thousands of his party supporters ahead of the elections then scheduled for August 10, he warned that Israel someday would be “drawn in the blood it sheds”. He expanded further: “Just like Hitler, who sought to establish a race free of all faults, Israel is chasing after the same target”. Hailing his stance, his supporters cheered and chanted his name, and that of Gaza.
In fact, Gaza, in particular, seemed like the backbone of Turkish foreign policy and domestic policy discourses — a unifying force of emotions and moral conviction that won the country’s leaders much admiration and helped secure several poll victories.
But things quickly changed, according to the edicts of political urgency, perhaps.
On June 27, this year, Erdogan signed a reconciliation agreement with Israel. The long-term and certainly clearly-articulated foe metamorphosed in a short span of time into becoming Turkey’s friend and ally merely days before July 8, when Gaza commemorated the anniversary of its 2014 war. Palestinians reacted with equal disappointment and fury, being fully aware that Israel was yet to be held accountable for any of its alleged war crimes and those who were critical of the agreement in Turkey itself were being censured. Moreover, Turkey’s proposed condition that the siege on Gaza be lifted before reconciliation talks take place, was subverted.
The agreement might have brought reconciliation and promise of much wealth between the two countries, but it never redressed the questions that led to the rift in the first place — the very imprisonment of millions of Gazans by an oppressive regime.
The siege on Gaza will continue, although tonnes of aid and foodstuff will enter the besieged Strip, following the reconciliation talks, once it is ‘examined’ by Israel at the Ashdod seaport, of course. Israel reportedly apologised for killing the Turkish humanitarian activists, yet Israel’s soldiers are guaranteed not to be brought to justice for their actions. The six-year rift will end, but without any political horizon for blockaded Gaza.
Expectedly, the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation came out strongly against the deal. Duly, they were criticised by Erdogan for not consulting with him first before setting sail for Gaza.
While Hamas has commended Turkey for its support, despite the unfair deal with Israel, Palestinians in the Strip are left with little else but crushed hopes and a sequence of bloody anniversaries to commemorate. The Turkish support seemed like a bedrock, or, at least, a ray of hope in these dark times. Yet, the reality is that Palestinians feel nothing short of betrayal.
Thanks to Turkey, many Palestinians had finally renewed their faith, not just in terms of humanity, but also in what Palestinian Muslims call their ‘ummah’, their larger Muslim nation. True, the siege that had suffocated Gaza all of these years was not broken, following the bloody Israeli assault on the ships. However, what in fact broke, and immediately so, was the sense of isolation that Palestinians have felt for so many years.
When Israel attacked the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, carrying out its deadly assault on the Turkish Mavi Marmara, Palestinians in Gaza marched in large numbers, raised posters adorned with the faces of their Turkish martyrs and hailed Erdogan, as the hero they desperately needed since their own leadership often betrayed them.
Curiously, Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognise Israel in 1949, when more than a million Palestinian refugees lived in squalid refugee camps, while Israel was erecting a brand new country upon the ruins of the refugees’ homes.
While gradually normalising relations with Israel, Turkey occasionally protested one Israeli policy or another. Yet, peculiarly, nearly every time, the relationship between Israel and Turkey would resume without ever addressing Turkey’s grievances and the re-normalisation fanfare would take place along with massive investments and military contracts. That same scenario was repeated after the Nakba, after the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, the 1967 war and occupation of what remained of historic Palestine and Israel’s declaration of Jerusalem (Al Quds) as its “eternal capital” in 1980.
Even when Nato powers, led by the United States, worked diligently to mend the rift that had resulted from the Israeli attack on Mavi Marmara, trade between both countries never ceased.
“Though political relations had hit rock bottom, both Turkey and Israel knew business must go on,” Turkey’s TRT World reported. “Business and politics were separated by a Chinese-Wall-like efficiency. Trade not only continued, but expanded by 26 per cent compared to 2010.”
2013 and 2014 were one of the busiest years for Turkish Airlines, carrying passengers between Turkey and Israel, and in 2015, trade between both countries had risen to $5.6 billion (Dh20.59 billion), according to Turkish Statistics Institute, cited in TRT. Diplomatic re-normalisation between Istanbul and Tel Aviv has been afoot for years, although one of Turkey’s oft-repeated conditions, which Palestinians were promised, was that no such rapprochement was possible without lifting the siege on Gaza.
But a completely different story emerged on June 27, when a normalisation deal was signed — one that is not inspired by the urge to end the siege in Gaza, but rather ‘spurred by energy prospects’. There is no lifting of the siege, it turned out, but rather the lifting of restrictions that would allow Israel to ship natural gas via Turkey to the rest of Europe, generating billions of dollars in the process. The Israeli Security Cabinet hurriedly approved the reconciliation agreement on June 29, and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, celebrated what he called an agreement with “immense implications for the Israeli economy”. Al Jazeera reported that Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said: “The Israeli embargo on Gaza has been ‘largely lifted’.”
In reality, it hasn’t. Moreover, embargoes are concerned with food and fuel. It is freedom from a suffocating blockade that Palestinians sought, not Turkish handouts to be delivered via an Israeli seaport.
The Turkish-Israeli deal is a blow to Palestinian hopes that their siege is about to end, that they were no longer alone facing Israel’s military machine and its powerful western benefactors.
However, perhaps the deal is in fact a wake-up call — that Palestinians must count on themselves first and foremost, achieve their elusive unity and seek solidarity the world over, not just with Ankara.
Dr Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include Searching Jenin, The Second Palestinian Intifada and his latest My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
