Special Report, April 30, 2002

The Daily Star

Ed Blanche
Special to The Daily Star

Israel’s controversial military alliance with Turkey is being increasingly strained by Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Palestinian towns in the West Bank, enough for Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit to brand it “genocide,” not an epithet that Ankara invokes since it has been haunted by allegations that the Turks massacred some 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.
There is strong sympathy for the Palestinians in Turkey. Opposition parties, along with a significant portion of the mainstream press, are calling for Ankara to abrogate its February 1996 military cooperation agreement with Israel and cancel large defense contracts with the Jewish state.
There have been signs for some time that Ankara was becoming uncomfortable with its expanding ties with Israel because of the Palestinian intifada. Yet, despite growing public pressure, it is highly unlikely that Turkey will make any moves to break off this strategic partnership between two pro-Western, non-Arab states who are the region’s strongest militarily powers.
Despite the unease, Turkey’s generals, the real power in the country, seem determined to develop the relationship further for strategic and economic reasons. And just to prove their point, as Israeli tanks smashed their way into West Bank towns at the end of March, the generals ordered the Defense Ministry to sign a controversial $668 million contract with state-run Israel Military Industries (IMI) to upgrade 170 of the Turkish Army’s US-built M60A1 tanks.
The partnership with Israel gives Ankara immense influence in Washington through the pro-Israel lobby at a time when its relations with Europe are uneasy. The two countries are America’s most reliable allies in the Middle East and their partnership benefits US strategic interests, such as containing Iraq and Iran while protecting Jordan. The Americans are also using Turkey, with Israeli support, as the springboard for thrusting into Central Asia and securing the vast oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Basin, a key element in the Bush administration’s drive to secure new energy sources and lessen US dependence on the Gulf for its oil.
The alliance also gives Turkey access to Israeli weapons systems. It is conducting an ambitious modernization of its armed forces that has been hampered by political restrictions imposed on weapons imports and technology transfers by the US Congress and European legislatures, citing Turkey’s poor human rights record.
For their part, the Israelis desperately want to preserve the alliance with Turkey since that could provide their military forces with bases that put potential targets in Iran and Iraq within striking distance, enhancing the capabilities they already have to launch attacks from Israeli itself. Lucrative military contracts, like that with IMI, are also vital for Israel’s defense industries, which increasingly rely on foreign orders to maintain production lines and develop new systems.
Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, wrote in a recent paper: “While not a formal alliance, the present level of Israeli-Turkish security and political cooperation and the sheer economic, political and military weight of the two states combined ‘create a new alignment of power in the Middle East.’ Apart from their conventional might, Israel and Turkey have the strongest and most advanced economies in the region. Their combined GDP (gross domestic product) is much larger than the combined GDP of all other major military powers in the region.”
The military alliance has caused deep concern in the region particularly Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Iran, which see it as a threat. Syria, Iraq and Iran believe that the alliance, encouraged to the hilt by the Americans, is designed to encircle them. The outbreak of the intifada in September 2000 and the subsequent election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister caused some dismay in Ankara, and the alliance with Israel came to be seen as something of a political liability.
Behind the scenes, the defense establishments in both countries are working hard to keep the relationship intact. Over the last few weeks, Amos Yaron, director-general of Israel’s Defense Ministry, has made repeated telephone calls to Turkish officials, including Dursun Ali Ercan, who heads the undersecretariat for defense industries, Turkey’s main procurement agency. Israeli Foreign Ministry officials have been in constant contact with their counterparts in Ankara to limit the damage but, sources report, are becoming increasingly alarmed that intensifying domestic pressure in Turkey could jeopardize the alliance.
Ecevit more than once condemned the violence, blaming both the Palestinians and Israelis in more or less equal measure. But Sharon’s policy of systematically assassinating Palestinian leaders and the rampage into the West Bank that he launched on March 29 caused deep embarrassment in Ankara. President Ahmed Sezer denounced the “Israeli aggression” and called for an end to the occupation of Palestinian land, warning US President George W. Bush that the conflict would damage the “war against terrorism” as well as US interests in the region.
Foreign Minister Ismael Cem demanded an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and declared that it was “not realistic to expect a (Palestinian) administration which was humiliated and invaded, the leader of which has been isolated, to control terrorist factions.”
 Finally, on April 4, Ecevit delivered an unusually harsh denunciation of Israel. “The whole of the Palestinian state is being destroyed step by step,” he told parliamentary deputies of his center-left Democratic Left Party (DSP). “A genocide against the Palestinian people is being carried out before the eyes of the world.”
Under pressure from Turkey’s generals, the alliance’s staunch-est advocates, Ecevit was forced to back off his use of the word “genocide,” but declared: “My words reflected the anxiety felt in our country and our region.”
That could be seen on the streets, where Turks, mainly Islamists and leftists, continued to demonstrate against Israel’s actions and, in some instances, were arrested for their pains. One of the targets of their ire was the contract with IMI. Ecevit insisted that contract would be honored, but said: “We will review our relations with Israel in the future.”
How encompassing that review might be remains to be seen. The generals have no wish to jeopardize Turkey’s relationship with Israel, which they see as a vital element in their strategic planning for extending Turkish influence in Central Asia. For one thing, the deal with IMI is the first phase of a program to upgrade 900 M60s, worth around $7 billion, and Israeli firms are seen as the most likely partners, further cementing the military relationship with Israel.
Underlining the generals’ commitment to the alliance, IMI was given the $668 million contract without it being out to tender, which is the usual way of doing business in such deals. Other companies had proposed lower bids than IMI which offered to upgrade each tank for $3.5 million. One from General Dynamics of the US, for instance, was $500,000 less per tank.
Two senior Defense Ministry officials involved in the M60 project opposed giving the contract to the Israelis and were dismissed earlier this year. In the end, the ministry signed the deal under pressure from the general staff. The Turkish media was outraged, with commentator Mehmet Ocaktan asking: “Was it in the interests of the Turkish people that their money should be used to strengthen Sharon and allow him to kill more Palestinians?”
As fate would have it, the project may be torpedoed from an unexpected quarter ­ Germany, whose relations with Turkey have been rather stormy of late. The German companies that were supposed to supply the engines to IMI for the M60 upgrades were reported to have stopped deliveries after Berlin suspended some military sales to Israel in protest against the invasion of the West Bank. That is likely to prove a temporary setback, but the antipathy of many Turks toward Israel appears to be growing.

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