Ankara has reportedly blocked Israel’s participation in a key NATO
summit, despite objections from partners. It says Tel Aviv must first
apologize for the killings of Turkish citizens in a raid on a
humanitarian aid fleet in 2010.
The objection to Israel’s presence at the event, which will take
place in Chicago on May 20-21, was voiced by Turkish Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoğlu during the alliance’s meeting in Brussels last week,
reports Turkish daily newspaper Hürriyet.
“There will be no
Israeli presence at the NATO meeting unless they issue a formal apology
and pay compensation for the Turkish citizens their commandos killed in
international waters,” a senior Turkish official told the newspaper.
The
unnamed official said other NATO members were pressing Turkey to revoke
the veto, but Ankara refused to acquiesce. He called on Israel’s
supporters in the conflict to convince Israel to do as Turkey wishes.
The
blocking is the latest in a string of Turkish moves against Israeli
cooperation with NATO. Earlier it stopped Israel from opening an office
at the NATO headquarters and blocked its participation in the
Mediterranean Dialogue group.
The countries have been engaged in a
bitter quarrel for two years now, ever since the May 2010 commando raid
on the Free Gaza fleet that resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish
citizens on board the Mavi Marmara ship. Tel Aviv refused to apologize
for the killings, and in response Ankara severed virtually all ties with
Tel Aviv.
At the April 18 meeting, some members of NATO,
including the United States and France, and Secretary-General Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, reportedly criticized Turkey for bringing a bilateral
conflict into the alliance’s affairs. The confrontational position is “a violation of NATO’s values,” Hürriyet cites them as saying.
In
response, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu said that NATO’s partnership
values hardly correspond to a situation in which a country NATO calls a
partner kills citizens of a NATO member and fails to apologize for it.
Turkey’s
membership in the alliance came under the spotlight recently, after
Ankara threatened to invoke the collective security rights in response
to a Syrian cross-border raid on a refugee camp.
The idea was
later aired at the meeting of the so-called Friends of Syria group,
which gathered in Paris last week to discuss the possibility of putting
more pressure on the Syrian government.
RT
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