Herzog’s Turkey visit announced as Erdoğan was in UAE

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s reconciliation visit to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) coincided with Valentine’s Day, February 14. While Erdogan was in the UAE, two countries signed 13 cooperation agreements. Erdogan and bin Zayed seemed to reconcile the past nine years of fighting and accusations.

Among the agreements was the sale of Turkish-made UAVs and UCAVs to the UAE. According to the information received, the renewal of Bayraktar TB2 software exports also increased. The UAE mainly buys these weapons against the Iranian threat.

On the second day of Erdogan’s contact with the UAE, two announcements attracted attention. One of them was that Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey, which has been talked about for a while, will be on March 9-10. Immediately afterwards, it was announced that Presidential Spokesperson and Security and Foreign Policy Advisor İbrahim Kalın and Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal to go to Palestine and meet with President Mahmud Abbas on February 16-17.

During his Ankara visit, UAE had announced that it had extended a 10 Billion Dollars loan for possible ventures of its investors in Israel to Turkey as well.

MIT operation just before the visit

According to the talks in the diplomatic lobbies, the Israeli delegation’s being seen at the Emirates Palace hotel, where Erdogan was staying, may have played a role in the developments regarding Israel.

According to the statements made in Ankara on February 11, the National Intelligence Office (MIT) and Police teams caught an espionage network affiliated with the Iranian intelligence VAJA while they were preparing to assassinate Yair Galler, a businessman with dual citizenship from Israel and Turkey. According to the statements, the assassination attempt, which was foiled, was planned both to avenge the head of the Iranian nuclear program, Muhsin Fahirzade, who was killed by Israeli agents on November 28, 2020. The details about the operation were announced before Erdogan’s visit to the UAE. Published in Istanbul, Şalom newspaper wrote on February 14, when Erdoğan’s contacts in the UAE began, that 12 attacks against Israelis in Turkey in the last two years prevented thanks to the strengthening of MIT and MOSSAD relations.

Developing relations with the UAE and Israel are likely to lead to an improvement in Turkey’s relations with Palestine. It is important that the Turkish delegation visited the Abbas administration in Palestine before Herzog’s trip to Turkey. For the last 15 years, Erdogan has given his weight to relations with Hamas along the lines of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.

Introduction to new manoeuvres in the UAE

Turkey’s relations with both the UAE and Israel, which developed in the same period, also means reiteration that Erdogan gave up on the Middle East policy he pursued from 2011 to 2020, since the Arab Spring, or the revolts, began. It can be said that the first break in this policy was the July 15 2016 military coup attempt.

Erdogan and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials have repeatedly said that the Fethullah Gulen organization, which led the coup attempt, was US-based and supported by Israel and the UAE. It is understood that this discourse and the sympathy of the Muslim Brotherhood in the ranks of the AKP will no longer take hold of Turkey’s Middle East policy.

Turkey’s reminding its military presence in Syria, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean, Azerbaijan during the 2016-2021 period and the diplomacy it carried out played a role in this. An important factor was the effort to overcome the economic problems, especially since 2018, by emphasizing international relations. In the meantime, we will have to take into account the developments that remind the West of Turkey’s geographical and strategic importance, such as the USA’s evasive withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Experienced diplomat Namık Tan wrote that England could have more influence than the USA in this process.

The era of “Sell and get rid of”?

In addition to attracting investments in risky and controversial projects such as Kanal Istanbul, Turkey’s efforts to sell its economic assets to Gulf investors came to the fore during this period.

The statement of Qatari Foreign Minister Abdulrahman Al Thani in December 2021 at the press conference with Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu that they closely followed the “opportunities that Turkey’s economic difficulties will bring forth” was a clear expression of this situation.

In the business circles, there are rumours that there are attempts by the government to sell not only the public companies and organizations under the control of the Turkey Wealth Fund (TVF) but also some private companies and facilities to Arab investors in the Gulf before the 2023 elections.

For a while, there was a rising trend of “Give and get rid of” in Turkey’s Cyprus politics. I hope these initiatives do not turn into a kind of “Sell and get rid of” policy.

Despite President Erdogan’s great desire, the Russia-Ukraine tension seems to be resolved between the USA and Russia without his mediation. But when we look at this side, the relations that developed in the same period with the UAE and Israel can be considered a new turning point in Turkish foreign policy. Egypt and Saudi Arabia may be next.