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U.S. Plays Counselor With Turkey, Israel

03 June 2010 23:00 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. One of the duties of a superpower is playing the role of therapist for your friendsâ€”which is precisely the task the U.S. performed this week to lower the temperature in a crisis between two crucial allies, Israel and Turkey, APA reports quoting online.wsj.com besite.

The counseling began before dawn on Monday, shortly after Israeli commandos boarded a flotilla of six ships trying to run a blockade to deliver supplies to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and killed eight Turks in the ensuing fracas.

The therapy continued in a flurry of urgent conversations with a senior Turkish official in a hotel room in Washington and a top Israeli official quickly invited to town and in overseas calls by President Barack Obama.

Ultimately, the mediation succeeded in ending what had emerged as the most immediate cause of rising tensions: the detention in Israel of hundreds of Turkish citizens who formed the bulk of the pro-Palestinian activists removed from the ships.

All told, the American response is a case study in international damage controlâ€”as well as an illustration of its limits. The story is hardly over, of course. Anger in both nations runs high, and two more aid ships heading for Gaza could become another flash point.

Still, the strategic importance of both Israel and Turkey to America’s Middle East strategy compelled the Obama administration to try to contain the passions. Israel is both America’s closest ally in the region and the one Washington most needs to persuade it can rely on international help to end the nuclear threat from Iran without military action. Turkey is a vital bridge between the West and the Mideast, a rare Muslim state that had good ties to Israel, and a potential moderate alternative to Iran as leader in the Islamic world.

"From a geo-strategic issue, I think it’s extremely important that those two nations have bilateral relations that are solid and strong," said Gen. James Jones, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, in an interview. Asked whether they can be restored, he replied: "I won’t say it’s impossible. We’re in a trough right now. So it’s a question of how far you can climb out of it. All I can say is they both say they want to fix this."

The U.S. intervention began early Monday, when Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called Gen. Jones to tell him of the Israeli raid. The timing was horrible; both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu were en route to Washington to talk, not about violence at sea, but peace with Palestinians and Iran’s nuclear program.

A rapid series of phone calls ensued, with the U.S. playing the role of marriage counselor by talking to Turks and Israelis, who weren’t talking to each other. Soon, Mr. Obama called Mr. Netanyahu, who was in Canada, and they agreed the Israeli leader would drop his planned trip to the U.S. and return home.

But, crucially, the U.S. also asked that Mr. Netanyahu send his national security adviser, Uzi Arad, on to Washington so American officials could reach out quickly to a top Israeli as they tried to defuse the crisis. Mr. Davutoglu, who was in New York, caught a plane for Washington to play the same role for Turkey.

Meantime, Mr. Obama also called an angry Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The conversation showed that the Israeli-Turkish relationship was in bad shape, but also that the burning issue for Turkey was winning the rapid release of several hundred Turkish citizens who had been taken off the ships by Israeli soldiers. "The immediate tourniquet that could be put on this arterial bleed, if you want, had to do with getting the Turkish citizens home," Gen. Jones said.

So the U.S. set out to make that happen. Gen. Jones went to the Willard Hotel, a few blocks from the White House, to meet Mr. Davutoglu. He then met Israel’s Mr. Arad at the White House.

Mr. Netanyahu’s government agreed to quickly clear an internal legal hurdle that was standing in the way of an immediate release: It persuaded the country’s supreme court to deny appeals by some Israeli groups calling for charges to be pressed against those taken off the ships.

By late Wednesday, planeloads of Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were heading home. Obviously, that doesn’t resolve the broader issues. Gen. Jones won’t offer an opinion on the continuing Israeli blockade of Gazaâ€”"We’re not in the arbitration mode here"â€” but notes that Turkish officials in his conversations have "bemoaned the fact" that ties with Israel have so frayed, indicating they want improvement.

"There’s a lot of water to run under this bridge yet," Gen Jones said. But he added: "All I can say is that in each and every turn in my conversations with Turkish officials they have deplored the fact, and bemoaned the fact, that this relationship is not what it used to be. I’ve not heard them say, to me at any rate, that they’re particularly pleased, that this is something they wantedâ€¦a break in the relationship. They’ve not told me that."

He worries most urgently, he says, about what will happen with those other relief ships approaching Gaza. The counseling sessions will continue