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Secret Turkish-Israeli military alliance launches relations

05 January 2010 [10:15] - TODAY.AZ
Turkey’s “strategic alliance” with Israel may have evaporated in a most public way, its death broadcast live before an audience of millions watching last year’s Davos summit.
But the beginnings of this diplomatic courtship began in secrecy, so secret in fact it was known as the “Ghostly Alliance.”

The first seeds of the relationship were sown the night of Aug. 29, 1958. A plane carrying Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion secretly landed in Turkey.

His meeting in Ankara with Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes proved to be a turning point in Turkish-Israeli relations, which had been effectively frozen since the Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956 that prompted Turkey to downgrade its diplomatic representation in Israel.

The two countries forged a top-secret alliance, hence the “Ghostly” name, and to this day Turkish officials maintain complete silence about it. The fact that Ben Gurion, a graduate of Istanbul University, was fluent in Turkish may have helped.

But little has ever been made of that connection and the Israeli side is generally mum as well on the results of that meeting.

“The secrecy Turkey maintains to this day about the alliance is a symbol of the ultra sensitivity of Turkey not to provoke Arab countries,” according to Ofra Bengio’s book “The Turkish-Israeli Relationship: Changing Ties of Middle Eastern Outsiders.”

The move was initiated by Israel, which sought better relations with Turkey as a wedge to break out of a hostile ring of Arab neighbors. In fact, Israel had long been motivated to improve relations with Turkey. Feeling excluded by its neighbors, Israel understandably sought to improve its legitimacy by forging good relations with the outside world.

Under utmost secrecy, relations on the military and economic fronts began improving after the Ankara meeting. In 1996, Turkish President Süleyman Demirel became the first Turkish head of state to visit Israel – although the visit was not his first as a Turkish official. Demirel first visited Israel in 1959 as the head of the State Water Authority, according to Bengio’s book.

He was among the 32 heads of various states that Reuven Kupperman, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, proudly counts as notches on his protocol belt. And in better times, Kupperman adds he has three tallies for Turkish chiefs of staff. But that was back when the two nations’ ties were “strategic,” an adjective sometimes defining an “alliance,” sometimes a “partnership,” sometimes merely a “relationship.”

Whatever the diplomatic nomenclature, it was never a “strategic alliance,” said Israeli journalist Udi Segal. At best, the strategic part was aspirational, a term that hopeful diplomats and politicians on both sides ascribed to the evolving ties.

“In a strategic relationship, you may have differences of opinion but the underlying relationship remains,” he said. “After Cast Lead (the codename for the Gaza war) everything fell apart.”

But some officials on both sides disagree, possibly because they know more than what has been made public.

/Hurriyet Daily News/
URL: http://www.today.az/news/regions/58901.html

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