Why UAE’s landmark deal with Israel is bad for Turkey

“From the point of view of mainstream US policymakers, Erdogan’s hostility toward Israel and outreach to Hamas appears to be ideologically motivated and an extension of a broader Islamist, disruptive agenda in the Middle East,” noted Merve Tahiroglu, Turkey program coordinator at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a think tank in Washington. “Its overall impact on the United States has been to magnify Turkey’s policies toward the rest of the region and evaluate those moves as part of a broader, strategic Turkish reorientation under Erdogan,” she told Al-Monitor.

“Turkey is a treaty ally to the United States, so it is supposed to be closer than any of the Gulf monarchies. But what is happening in effect is that Washington’s doors are closed to Turkey, while the same doors are being opened to the Gulf monarchies,” said Selim Koru, an expert at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara.

A common fear of Iran is widely seen as the main driver of Israeli and Gulf rapprochement. But Turkey’s unabashed mentoring of Hamas and fellow Muslim Brotherhood entities alongside its increasingly aggressive posturing in Syria, Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean are cited as a further reason. This is probably an exaggeration, and Israeli officials emphasize in private that the deal is not “against Turkey.” Yet Turkey is simultaneously at odds with its NATO allies the United States, France and Greece, as it is with governments in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and most of the Gulf nations. Its sole regional friend is Qatar, who is keen to not alienate Israel. Iran remains neither ally nor foe.

Increasingly isolated, its economy on the ropes and its democracy in shreds, Turkey is no longer “the beacon that inspired millions of Muslims,” lamented a former Turkish diplomat who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name. In hindsight, Erdogan’s determined political break with Israel — starting with his dressing down of the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in Davos over Israeli atrocities in Gaza and accelerated by the Mavi Marmara showdown — may well have presaged Turkey’s gradual unmooring from traditional partnerships with its Western allies.

However, Israel’s behavior under its veteran prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also changed, Koru argued. “Turkey and Israel were both market-based economies, roughly rules-based when it came to international conduct,” he said. “That has changed more for Turkey than for Israel, but it changed for both, I think. They’re both more political than they used to be.”

Israeli sources contend, however, that while Turkey remains undeniably influential, it’s on the wrong side of history. “The Abraham Accords have changed the whole paradigm of peacemaking in the Middle East,” said a well-placed Israeli source who closely follows Turkey. “Turkey could have been the one helping to broker [the accords], but it’s aligned with Iran and Hamas.”

Might Turkey reverse course? “RTE doesn’t have it in his DNA,” the source insisted, using Erdogan’s initials. “What is left for RTE is to try to sabotage the deal.”

In 2009, former Turkish President Abdullah Gul went to Syria and said it was Turkey’s gate to the Middle East. “Today, Turkey’s sole gateway to the Middle East is through the port of Haifa,” the Israeli source, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, asserted. He was alluding to trade between the two countries, which paradoxically has continued to expand even after Turkey asked Israel’s ambassador to leave Ankara in 2018 over further carnage in Gaza and something President Donald Trump did — that is, move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

But things may be changing on the economic front as well. Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior research fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies who specializes in Turkish foreign policy, said, “The [commercial] opportunities that are now opening for Israel in the Gulf will influence also Israel’s trade relations and aviation connections with Turkey and are likely to cause a decrease in the phenomenal numbers we saw in 2019 — both in terms of the number of Israeli [transit] passengers going through Turkey and the record-high trade volume.”

“Of course we will be able to judge the true influence of the Abraham Accords in this respect only after the COVID-19 pandemic will be contained. But it is already clear that there will be an economic impact to this shift of Israel toward the Gulf states,” said Lindenstrauss.

The question of whether Turkey will continue to lead “an independent Muslim Brotherhood axis” or whether it will grow closer to Iran’s “axis of resistance” is still an open one, Lindenstrauss remarked. Either way, “It would be in the interest of Israel and the Gulf states to keep the degree of animosity at a level that will not push Turkey toward Iran” beyond their existing cooperation,” Lindenstrauss concluded.