Turkey: Three Years Later, Mavi Marmara Event Remains Potent Political Issue
Today marks the third anniversary of the Mavi Marmara incident, an Israeli military raid on a Turkish-led aid flotilla to Gaza that resulted in the death of nine Turks and in the shattering of the once-close ties between Ankara and Jerusalem.
In March, Turkey and Israel -- with American help -- started what looks like will be a drawn-out reconciliation process. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and apologized for "operational mistakes" made during the incident that resulted in the loss of life, meeting one of the three conditions set forth by Ankara for diplomatic relations to be restored. The two countries are now working on the second condition, compensation for the victims, which is where they seem to be getting stuck. As Ha'aretz recently reported, Israel is offering to pay $100,000 to each victim's family, while Turkey is demanding $1 million (Turkish officials have denied the Israeli report).
Things will likely get more complicated in terms of the third condition, which, as set forth by Erdogan, is Israel's lifting of its blockade on Gaza. During his recent visit to Washington, the Turkish leader again stated that relations with Israel could only be restarted once this condition has been met. So far, there has no been any indication from either side about how they plan to deal with this complicating issue beyond some vague statements made by Turkish officials about Israel taking "positive" steps to improve conditions in Gaza.
This third condition ties into the even more difficult issue, at least in terms of improving Turkish-Israeli ties, of how potent the Mavi Marmara incident and the Palestinian issue -- Gaza, in particular -- remain as political issues. In many ways, the families of the victims, guided by the The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH), the Islamist aid organization that organized the flotilla, have become the Turkish equivalent of the 9/11 widows -- a group whose suffering has given them a national (and even international) platform, which makes it politically risky to go against their wishes.
For example, while Israel wants the Mavi Marmara-related legal actions against it dropped as part the reconciliation process, the families and the IHH have insisted the lawsuits will continue. Reports Today's Zaman:
The families of the nine victims have taken the attack on the Mavi Marmara to court in and outside of Turkey. In the court case in Turkey, which was launched against the aggressors in November of last year, the indictment prepared by İstanbul Specially Authorized Prosecutor Mehmet Akif Ekinci seeks 10 aggravated life sentences for the four top Israeli commanders, including the country's chief of General Staff, who were involved in the 2010 Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
The attack also has recently been taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Lawyers of the victims' families filed a complaint in mid-May against Israel at the court in The Hague. “If this case fails to produce a result, this will show that this court is under the hegemony of certain countries and is used only to make some countries toe the line politically,” Ramazan Arıtürk, one of the lawyers of the victims' families said.
The families are determined to pursue a criminal court case against the Israeli commanders involved in the raid, although Israel wants the lawsuits against its soldiers to be dropped as part of the agreement on compensation. The criminal court case is expected to be dropped when Turkey and Israel finalize an agreement on the compensation, a move that will be followed by a parliamentary ratification of the agreement as an international treaty.
Ultimately, coming to terms with the Israeli government might be the easy part for Ankara. The hard part with be dealing with the domestic resistance to restoring ties with Jerusalem. As the Brookings Institution's Kemal Kirisci wrote in a recent brief: "As compensation talks with Israel continue, the real challenge will lie in the Turkish government’s ability to soften the position of the İHH, hard-liners within AK Party and the victims’ families toward the Gaza blockade while keeping an eye on Turkey’s immediate geopolitical interests."
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