Israeli President Isaac Herzog is planning a rare trip to Turkey, his office said on Tuesday February 15 without specifying a date, against a backdrop of rapprochement between the two countries with strained relations.
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“A delegation of senior officials from Turkey will arrive in Israel this week as part of preparations for President Isaac Herzog’s planned visit to discuss relations between the two countries“, announced in a press release the office of the Israeli head of state. According to the official Turkish television channel TRT, this visit could take place on March 9 and 10.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in January that his counterpart Isaac Herzog would come to Turkey “at the beginning of February“and hoped that this visit opens”a new way in relationshipsbetween the two countries. Israel had not confirmed this information. The Turkish president also said he was ready to cooperate with Israel on a gas pipeline project in the eastern Mediterranean, thus marking Ankara’s desire to renew ties with the Jewish state.
Read alsoIsrael/Turkey: construction of a gas pipeline
This new gas pipeline project would bring gas from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe. Turkey had previously strongly opposed a similar project in which Israel and its historical rival, Greece, were associated. Named EastMed, it was backed at the time by former US President Donald Trump. But according to the Israeli and Turkish media, Washington would have warned Athens that it no longer supported this project because of the tensions it caused with Ankara.
In mid-November, Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a meeting with Isaac Herzog and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – the first meeting between an Israeli Prime Minister and Recep Tayyip Erdogan since 2013 – a few hours after the release and return to their country of an Israeli tourist couple accused of spying and detained in Turkey. Relations between Ankara and Israel have been strained since the Mavi Marmara affair in 2010, when Israeli forces launched a deadly assault on a Turkish ship trying to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave under Israeli blockade. for 15 years. Both countries recalled their ambassadors in 2018 after Palestinian protesters died in Gaza.