NewsEuropeTurkey says it wants to maintain relations with Israel, regardless of election results

Turkey says it wants to maintain relations with Israel, regardless of election results

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – -/Turkish presidency/dpa

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shown Ankara’s willingness to maintain relations with Israel regardless of the outcome of the Israeli legislative elections, after preliminary results point to a return to power of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu.

“Regardless of the election results, we want to maintain relations with Israel on a sustained basis, based on mutual respect for common sensitivities and interests,” he said in an interview with the ATV and Haber Turkish media.

“As long as values ​​are respected, I believe that a diplomacy of mutual gains benefits not only Turkey and Israel, but the entire region,” Erdogan explained, as reported by the Turkish newspaper ‘Daily Sabah’.

The partial results of the legislative elections in Israel, corresponding to 93.2 percent of the count, suggest that the coalition led by Netanyahu’s Likud would win a majority in Parliament by winning more than 60 of the 120 Knesset seats. .

Israel and Turkey announced in August the restoration of their diplomatic relations and the return of the ambassadors to their posts, after a series of rapprochements and mutual visits to resolve their bilateral disputes.

Relations between Israel and Turkey were interrupted in 2010 after the death of ten activists in the Israeli assault on the ship ‘Mavi Marmara’, which was part of the so-called Freedom Flotilla and was trying to circumvent the blockade imposed against the Gaza Strip.

After this incident, in June 2016, the two countries assured that they would normalize their relations, although ties were not fully restored and they even expelled their ambassadors in 2018 due to the repression by the Israeli security forces against thousands of Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip.

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