CAIRO – Turkey said yesterday it would escort aid ships to Gaza and would not allow a repetition of last year’s Israeli raid that killed nine Turks, setting the stage for a potential naval confrontation with its former ally.
Raising the stakes in Turkey’s row with Israel over its refusal to apologise for the killings, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told al-Jazeera television that Turkey had taken steps to stop Israel from unilaterally exploiting natural resources in the Mediterranean.
“Turkish warships, in the first place, are authorised to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Mr Erdogan said in the interview. “From now on, we will not let these ships be attacked by Israel, as what happened with the Freedom Flotilla.”
Referring to Mr Erdogan’s comments, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said: “This is a statement well worth not commenting on.”
Relations between Turkey and Israel, two close US allies in the region, have soured since Israeli forces boarded the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara aid ship in May 2010. Ankara downgraded ties and vowed to boost naval patrols in the eastern Mediterranean. Israel says it acted legally against ships that tried to breach its blockade on the Palestinian enclave and said it will continue to enforce it in order to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas.
Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak said earlier yesterday that Israel and Turkey would eventually mend fences rather than become foes, describing their unprecedented dispute over Gaza as “spilled milk”. – (Reuters)