Reuters:
By Sami Aboudi
CAIRO (Reuters) – Turkey said on Thursday it would escort aid ships to Gaza and would not allow a repetition of last year’s Israeli raid that killed nine Turks, setting the stage for a potential naval confrontation with its former ally.
Raising the stakes in Turkey’s row with Israel over its refusal to apologize for the killings, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Al Jazeera television that Turkey had taken steps to stop Israel from unilaterally exploiting natural resources in the Mediterranean.
“Turkish warships, in the first place, are authorized to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Erdogan said in the interview, broadcast by Al Jazeera with an Arabic translation.
“From now on, we will not let these ships to be attacked by Israel, as what happened with the Freedom Flotilla,” Erdogan said.
Referring to Erdogan’s comments, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said: “This is a statement well-worth not commenting on.”
Relations between Turkey and Israel, two close U.S. allies in the region, have soured since Israeli forces boarded the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara aid ship in May 2010.
Ankara downgraded ties and vowed to boost naval patrols in the eastern Mediterranean in the escalating row. Israel says it acted legally against ships that tried to breach its blockade on the Palestinian enclave which is ruled by the Islamist Hamas group.
Israel has said it will enforce the blockade, which it says is needed to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas.
There is more to this story than the Israeli blockade. Israel has signed a joint agreement with Cyprus to extract natural gas (reported to be a huge field) between the two states. Drilling, by an American company, is due to begin next month.
Erdogan has already stated that Turkish warships will intrude on the drilling operations. This will be make your mind up time for Obama. Will he support his ally (Israel) or his ally (Turkey)? In my opinion Erdogan will have caught the tiger’s tail if he makes good on his threats!
Oh! dear……I should have read the report before my previous post!!!!!!
That’ll teach me!
Arthur, I think that Buraq Hussein might actually not sit on the fence or help the mahoundians this time because of one reason, and this reason only: next year’s presidential race. No US candidate for president or re-election can afford not to support Israel.
As for Recep the Arab Erdoclown, he sure wants another really hard kick in his halal nuts. I have a feeling he’ll get that and much more.
If Israel gave one of those ships a torpedo enema, Edrogan would will do the same thing all the other arab counties do when Israel shows them who’s boss. He will screach like a little girl and do nothing.
Rather serious story, I see you believe in understatements.
First about Obama, there are already rumors he may not run, how true they are I don’t know. Unless he is forced to Obama will not support Israel, and I don’t know how fast that force can be used against him. It is best to take the worst case scenario (that Obama won’t support Israel until it is too late) and plan from there. The best case scenario would still leave the possibility of a major war but it would be a lower probability.
I have noted that many of the posters are expecting any conflict to be a replay of the 1967 war, in doing this you are making the very big mistake of underestimating our enemy, this leads to major disasters. All of the evidence I can find is that the Israeli military is taking the threat very seriously and are looking at the possibility that the Moslems have created a disciplined force that will be a very big threat.
If I was Israel I’d be calling up reservists, and giving them a refresher coarse in combat, and purchasing or building lots more tanks artillery and ships. A big and I mean big show of strength about now would go a long way to keeping the Islamic supremacist Jew hating rhetoric as just that.
They need to wean themselves of economic dependence on the USA as well, and start cultivating more lethal, less ambiguous allies.
Minefields on their borders, fields of fire, obstructions removed, etc.
They should also make it clear that in the event of an unprovoked attack by members of the religion of peace, in the event of an Israeli victory, the populations of the West Bank and Gaza (especially Gaza), will be moved into Jordan, where they can become the responsibility of the nascent Caliphate.
Muslims will from that point on be regarded as the enemy, while they insist on following their religion, and hostility will always be met with overwhelming force. Time for them to wake up, it’s a hard ball world, and you have to be hard to survive in it.
Israel’s going to have to start fighting on this one. If Turdogan starts bringing in the navy then the IDF need to bring in the big guns, navy, air strikes, the lot!Once the Muzz world see Israel back on form, nightmares of ’67 are going to come back and haunt them……..
What they need right now is big ammo dumps filled with small arms and artillery ammo.
As far as finding a more lethal friend then the US, name one? No one and I mean no one comes close to us, and despite are current administration that stabs our friends in the back Israel doesn’t have a better friend.