Turkish-Israel diplomatic relations reached to it lowest level yester day, when Turkish Foreign Ministry expelled the Israeli Ambassador from Ankara after a year long escalated mutual diplomacy over the attack on "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" on its humanitarian mission to Gaza on May 31, 2010. In that attack nine were killed, eight of them Turkish citizen and one American Turkish.
Immediately after the attack Turkey with the possible strongest term condemned Israeli Government and demanded for apologize and compensate the affected families. On the other hand Israel who decided the complete embargo on Gaza including the naval blockade by hitting Turkish flagship "Mavi Marmara" sent a strong message that they want nonetheless than the breaking of back of "Hamas" even at the risk of human miseries of hundreds of thousands civilians including women and children.
Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish FM in his statement used the hardest possible language like "Turkey doesn't recognize the embargo on Gaza", "As long as the Israeli government does not take the necessary steps, there will be no turning back", "The time has come for Israel to pay for its stance that sees it above international laws and disregards human conscience" and "The first and foremost result is that Israel is going to be devoid of Turkey's friendship". The Turkish reaction was not only confined to expel of Gabby Levy, the Israeli ambassador to Turkey, whose term had to be expired just next week but the cessation of all the strategic military agreement worth hundred million of US dollars.
Turkey was the first Muslim country, recognized Israel as a state in 1949 and over a period of half a century both the countries called their mutual diplomatic, economic and military relation as the high level priority.
Economically, in the ongoing year Turkey is the 3rd largest business partner of Israel by $3.3 billion of Mutual trade. Politically by this extreme diplomatic step from Turkey, Israel might further face serious challenge of continuous isolation since it cannot seduce the world only by the stories of holocaust during the WWII rather like many civilized nation it has to abide by values. Israel cannot simply take the revenge of all its historical deprivation by punishing the innocent civilians of Gaza.
In 2002 general election, when AKP (Justice and Development Party of Turkey) got the landslide mandate no one anticipated that the this moderate Islamic party will be able to rule for the consecutive third term and make Turkey a regional power with incredible economical growth and political stability, which the Turkey lacked for long.
Although, it is not the AKP with its strong stance against the Israel, in spite of the exclusive relation with Israel, the secular Motherland Party (Anavatan Partis) that ruled over Turkey from 1983-1991 headed by Turgut Ozal for the first time blew Israel by denouncing the Israeli oppression and supported the Palestinians' right to self-determination.
The fresh wave of diplomatic escalation ignited from 2004 when Israeli armed forces killed Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, the founder and the spritual leader of Hamas, Turkey called it a terrorist act by state sponsored terrorism. The second blow of AKP to Israel was the Turkish invitation to Khalid Mashal, heads the Syrian branch of the political bureau of Hamas in 2006.
Later on in 2008 during a summit of World Economic Forum in Davos, Recep Erdogan, the Turkish Premier accused Shimin Peres, the Israeli President for killing the innocent people. Now, Israel seems to be in a most defensive diplomatic position in decades after losing Egypt and Turkey one after another.
Turkey seems to be having upper hand in this tussle since Turkey has already occupied a strong position in the regional political and security equations. Analysts believe that Turkey might play the most significant role in the future political landscape of Northern Africa, Middle East, West Asia and the region around the Mediterranean Sea.
It has developed a remarkable prestige in the Islamic world and now claims to speak for Muslim World. On the contrary Israel after usage of excessive and disproportionate power against the Palestinians, aid workers and illegal settlement of Jews in prohibited areas faces the strongest pressure from its history in diplomacy.