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Netanyahu headed to Turkiye in first visit by an Israeli PM in 14 years

Israel and Turkiye have collaborated closely in private in since Netanyahu’s last visit over a decade ago

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Turkiye next week to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the first visit by an Israeli premier to the country in 14 years. Netanyahu’s arrival will follow a visit by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to Ankara three days before. 

“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will welcome the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Turkiye in the course of the same week,” the president’s office announced in a statement.

It added that the talks between Abbas and Erdogan will be on Turkish-Palestinian relations and the latest developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as other international issues.

Israel’s i24 News reports that Netanyahu and Erdogan are planning to discuss deepening ties in tourism and business and potential shipments of Israeli natural gas to Turkiye.

Netanyahu visited Turkiye in 2009 in the last visit by an Israeli prime minister. Ankara severed relations with Tel Aviv following Israel’s military raid on a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla the following year. The flotilla sought to break Israel’s punishing economic and military blockade of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces killed nine unarmed Turkish activists during the raid, prompting Erdogan to demand an apology Netanyahu refused to give until 2013.

Israel and Turkiye soon privately cooperated in facilitating crude oil exports to Israel from Iraq’s Kurdistan region. When ISIS invaded Mosul in 2014, Kurdish security forces, known as the Peshmerga, used the ensuing chaos to occupy oil-rich Kirkuk and begin oil exports independent of Baghdad. Kurdish oil was shipped to Turkiye’s Ceyhan port by pipeline and transported to Israel by tanker. The move helped Netanyahu meet Israel’s growing energy needs, while Turkish firms with ties to Erdogan benefitted financially.

Al-Monitor reports that several efforts to formally restore ties failed until last year, when Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Turkiye in March 2022. Herzog’s visit was part of Erdogan’s effort to improve relations with regional powers, including Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Turkiye and Israel fully reinstated their diplomatic ties by mutually reappointing ambassadors last August, while Erdogan met with then-Israeli premier Naftali Bennett in New York in September. 

In November, during bilateral talks, Turkiye refused Israeli demands to deport Hamas leaders living in the country.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkiye's former minister of foreign affairs, said Ankara does not view Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement that rules the Gaza Strip, as a terror group and refused to expel them.