In those days it was so important for both countries to sign as many agreements as possible. Once they signed an agreement that sounded a little bit funny to me: a cooperation protocol on land transportation.When I asked how this protocol would be implemented since there is Syria in between, one official answered me by saying, “Who knows, maybe one day we can find a way.”
It was also very typical in those days to start speeches with “We as the two democratic and secular countries of the Middle East…”
This claim was as funny as the protocol about land transportation cooperation.
Because Turkey at that time was not democratic (it still has some problems), and neither was Israel, at least when it came to non-Jews.
When it comes to secularism, the claim was getting ridiculous, especially for a country in which public transportation does not operate on Saturdays and in a country in which the state tries to determine the religion.
But there are also other similarities that were never mentioned: the militaristic structure of the countries and the deep official hatred for other ethnicities.
I am not talking about structural similarities, but similarities in mentality.
But many waters run under the bridge, and the bilateral relations turned into something very strange: The official statements coming from Israel turned into the angry speeches of one side of a partnership who knows all the secrets of the other side -- you don’t have any right to talk about my army, or in other words, I know what you did last summer.
Many analysts nowadays point out that Turkey is becoming a regional power, it wants to pursue an active Middle East policy, and within this framework the Middle East is not big enough to have Israel and Turkey at the same time. I agree with these comments.
Also many of them point out that Israel is dragging its feet, like always, in the peace process, but the difference is the attitude of the Obama administration, which really wants to do something on the Palestine question. I agree with these comments, too.
Here, I want to underline another point, on anti-Semitism in Turkish society. Yes, there is anti-Semitism in Turkish society, but this is mainly directed towards Israeli Jews. This anti-Semitism sure increased after the rudeness of Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Dany Ayalon against Turkey.
There are several reasons for this kind of anti-Semitism in Turkey. First of all, those who claim to fight against it put the criticism of the policies of the State of Israel in the same basket as those who say that all Jews are bad people. They deliberately eradicated the line between criticizing Israel and Jew-hating.
The other reason for this kind of anti-Semitism is the discriminative attitude in Turkish society and the lack of an effective campaign against hate speech, at least for the time being.
This discriminative attitude targets not only Israeli Jews but almost every group that is ethnically non-Turkish and those who have different political ideas than the official one. Especially after the military coup of 1980, the Turkish public was told that everybody is the enemy and that there are many separatists in society. But if we think about the brainwashing efforts of the military in Turkey, the level of discrimination in Turkish society is not high. However what we lack is an effective fight against it, although such a struggle is on its way, as we understand from the statements of Interior Minister Beşir Atalay.
Here comes the point: Turkey may be still at the beginning of the road, but it is ready to transform and implement a real democracy -- in short its mentality no longer has much in common with the official mind of Israel.
It is also time for the Israeli state to go under a structural and mentality change because this is the only way to survive in a world that wants peace; then, I am sure Turkey will be there as a good friend to share its experience in this field, too.
