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Erdogan Calls Israel Â«ThreatÂ» to Peace

08 April 2010 05:00 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Turkish premier’s remarks further strain countries’ alliance as analysts ponder nation’s foreign-policy leanings, APA reports quoting â€œThe Wall Street Journalâ€
Relations between Turkey and Israel, already at a low point, took a further battering Wednesday when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Israel as "the principal threat to peace" in the Middle East.
The remarks, made to reporters on a visit to Paris, came after Israel’s foreign minister had compared Mr. Erdogan to Venezuela’s Hugo ChÃ¡vez and Moammar Gadhafi of Libya earlier this week.
Israel responded quickly.
"We are interested in good relations with Turkey and regret that Mr. Erdogan chooses time after time to attack Israel," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a news conference in Jerusalem, adding that such remarks would do nothing for Middle Eastern stability.
This promises to be a tough month for Mr. Erdogan’s relationships with some of his most important Western allies, as he seeks to balance Turkey’s interests in boosting trade and political relations with its immediate neighborsâ€”including Iran, Syria and Azerbaijanâ€”with the conflicting goals of Western policy makers.
Mr. Erdogan’s clashes with Israel and rapprochement with Iran and Syria have led some analysts to believe Turkey is making a fundamental foreign-policy shift away from its Cold War partners in the West, in particular the U.S., and toward Middle Eastern powers such as Iran. At a recent meeting of foreign-policy analysts in Istanbul held by the Turkish Policy Quarterly, Israeli and Turkish analysts agreed on one pointâ€”the alliance those two countries built on shared security concerns in the 1990s is probably unsalvageable.
But a 38-page report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank on Turkey’s new role in the Middle East, released Wednesday, said the belief Turkey is turning away from the West is "incorrect." The report noted that Turkey’s trade with Europe continues to outweigh its trade with the Middle East by a wide margin, and European Union membership remains its core goal. But the report also warned that Mr. Erdogan risks losing the trust of Western allies.
Mr. Erdogan was in Paris on Wednesday to boost a trade relationship that has recovered from a brief setback caused by France’s recognition of the 1915 slaughter of Armenians under Ottoman rule as genocide, and to push for Turkey’s EU bid, which France opposes.
Next week, he heads to Washington for a conference on nuclear security to be attended by leaders from some 40 nationsâ€”including Mr. Netanyahu. There, he is likely to come under pressure to back U.S. and French efforts to secure unanimous support at the United Nations Security Council for further sanctions against Iran. Turkey currently holds one of 10 rotating seats on the 15-nation Council.
So far, Mr. Erdogan shows no sign of backing down from his opposition to imposing harsher sanctions on Iran, which together with his tough rhetoric on Israel and support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip have brought him popularity in many parts of the Middle East.
"I don’t think those [sanctions] being discussed can be effective," Mr. Erdogan told French daily Le Figaro in an interview published ahead of his visit. "Sanctions have already been agreed on two occasions. Those who took the decision to apply them were the first to violate them," he said, specifying the French, Germans, English, Americans and Chinese.
Mr. Erdogan also repeated his skepticism on whether Iran intends to use its nuclear-fuel program to build nuclear weapons, saying there is no such uncertainty concerning Israel’s undeclared arsenal.
Asked on Wednesday if he wasn’t concerned Israel could become the focus of attack for proliferation during next week’s nuclear conference in Washington, Mr. Netanyahu said, "I’m not concerned that anyone would think that Israel is a terrorist regime," the Associated Press reported.
Western governments and nuclear analysts say there is ample evidence that Iran’s nuclear-fuel program, which can be used to enrich civilian or weapons-grade fuel, is being developed to give Iran a military capability.
Also on the agenda in Washington will be Turkey’s troubled initiative to reopen its border with Armenia. This week, Mr. Erdogan sent a senior diplomat to Yerevan to discuss how to keep alive an effort that a growing number of Armenians see as a ploy to ensure President Barack Obama doesn’t recognize the 1915 killings as genocide in an annual statement to mark its April 24 anniversary.
Turkey was angered by the Obama administration’s failure to lobby strongly against a resolution to recognize the genocide in the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month. Its ambassador, withdrawn in protest at the vote, returned to Washington this week. While there is confidence in Ankara that President Obama won’t use the "genocide" word, the White House continues to press for ratification of the Armenia deal. Turkey says it won’t open the border until Armenia moves toward settling a territorial dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan.