New friends

That is all ancient history now. Ankara has managed to heal the rift with Damascus, promising a new era of cooperation on a score of issues, including joint military exercises and visa-less travel across their common border. At the same time, Turkey has proffered a very cold shoulder to Israel, cancelling the invitation to attend what had become regular tactical exercises over the Konya plains, which air space starved Israeli pilots rely on to stretch their wings. Ankara has urged the Israelis to use “common sense.” Do not, it advised, leap to the hasty conclusion that cancellation was intended as a further rebuke for the way Israeli jets behaved over Gaza. However, Ankara's move has left its more traditional allies scratching their heads, wondering what common sense should otherwise dictate. The US and Italian air forces, due to take part in the same maneuvers, chose to withdraw. The incident is part of a growing a suspicion that Turkey had begun to re-orientate its foreign policy, or at the very least that it is edging away from the NATO defined West to cultivate an “Islamic” bloc.

That would be a premature conclusion. The world cannot blame Ankara for trying, and in the case of Syria, succeeding, to turn the enemy-next-door into a friend. Monday was the culmination of a decade-long exercise in bridge mending. Only two days earlier, Turkey began work on repairing another damaged relationship with a neighbor by signing protocols with Yerevan. It was doing so at the potential risk of offending yet another near neighbor, Azerbaijan -- which is not only a Muslim-majority nation, but a Turkic speaking one as well.

There are other reasons why Turkey was not eager to proceed with the Anatolian Eagle military exercise. It was just two years ago that Israeli jets bombed what was reputed to be the foundations of a Syrian nuclear facility amid speculation that it did so via Turkish air space. Now, Ankara might have decided, was not the diplomatic moment to allow the Israeli jets to buzz about near that same terrain. More to the point, Tehran would see the exercise as preparation for an attack on its own nuclear facilities. Ankara is on the side of the Russians in hoping diplomacy and international inspectors can diffuse Tehran's ambitions to become a nuclear power. It hopes to bombard Iran with its new secret weapon of neighborly love.

As Ankara snuggles up to new friends, it feels it can be more cavalier in ruffling the feathers of the ones it once had. In the infamous “one minute” episode last year in Davos, the prime minister accused the Israeli president of “knowing how to kill.” There was no such rhetoric this time, but the cancelation of the international part of Anatolian Eagle is a calculated slight. That calculation is that Israel needs “low density” friendship with Turkey more than Turkey now needs Israeli as a companion-in-arms. The Israeli press will grumble, but the Israeli government will try to stop its relationship with Turkey from deteriorating further. But this reckons, too, that Israel's prime sponsor, the United States, will not take umbrage.