At the United Nations last month, Benjamin Netanyahu and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in person for the first time—an important sign of the gradual thaw between the two countries that began in 2022. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak examines its significance:
The warm hospitality Turkey’s President Erdoğan showed his Israeli counterpart [Isaac Herzog in March of last year], the growing intelligence cooperation, and the following reciprocal ministerial visits—ranging from the foreign, defense, and economic ministries to the Israeli earthquake rescue and humanitarian mission—have contributed to a fragile normalization between the two countries.
The normalization process of 2022 contrasts with the failed 2016 normalization, particularly at the level of bilateral summits, their frequency, and their public style. Notably, in 2022, we saw the Israeli and Turkish flags waving in the most visible way. Normalization was declared by the former Turkish prime minister Binali Yıldırım and Netanyahu in separate locations via video conferences in Ankara and Rome on June 27, 2016. Erdoğan preferred then not to pose next to an Israeli flag and allowed Yıldırım to take credit as the architect of the normalization.
[T]he Netanyahu-Erdoğan summit should be considered a milestone for bilateral relations if the leaderships of both countries display the political will to deepen the ties.
Read more on Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security: https://jiss.org.il/en/yanarocak-the-game-changers-inisraeli-turkish-relations/