Ayalon and Turkish envoy Celikko
Ayalon and Turkish envoy CelikkoIsrael news photo: Flash 90

Turkey continues to distance itself from Israel while warming up to Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon implied he was wrong in trying to use the media to snub Ankara, but Turkey is demanding a full public apology.

The latest crisis with Turkey, which recently has signed several agreements with Israel’s enemies to the north, exploded when Israeli journalists broadcast Ayalon’s private remarks on how to stage a photo session that would show that the meeting with the Turkish ambassador was not a friendly session. He had instructed that the envoy sit in a lower chair than Ayalon and his aides, with an Israeli flag prominently displayed.

After the footage of his remarks was shown on local television, Ayalon said, "It is not my way to insult foreign ambassadors, and in the future I will clarify my position by more acceptable diplomatic means."  Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has publicly backed Ayalon and noted on Tuesday that Turkey has taken significant steps to improve relations with Iran, as well as with Syria and Lebanon, all of them declared enemies of Israel.

Israeli media have focused on Ayalon’s diplomatic faux pas and at the same time ignored the reason for the meeting with Turkish ambassador Oguz Celikkol. Ayalon was incensed over a recent television soap opera in Turkey that portrays Mossad agents as kidnapping babies.

The anti-Israeli program followed bitter anti-Zionist comments the past year by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has called Israel a threat to world security. Earlier this week, he visited Lebanon, where Prime Minister Saad Hariri reminded him that Israel is an enemy.

Despite the current crisis, Defense Minister Ehud Barak will visit Ankara on Sunday, according to the Turkish news service Today’s Zayman. The president of Turkey and several senior ministers will meet with the Defense Minister, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not receive him.

Israeli Foreign Ministry bureaucrats have accused Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of trying to stir up a crisis with Turkey in order to torpedo Barak’s visit. Barak, who is chairman of the Labor party, and his political colleague, Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, have promoted military sales with Ankara despite Turkey’s increasingly anti-Zionist policies.

Turkey has ordered 10 Israeli UAVs worth nearly $200 million, but technical difficulties have delayed delivery. Turkey’s defense minister warned in November that he may cancel the four-year-old order if Israel does not deliver the systems by spring.

Ben-Eliezer pounced on the "Ayalon crisis” Tuesday and criticized the Deputy Foreign Minister for the “humiliation” of the Turkish envoy. "We have enough problems with the Muslim world without picking a fight with a country that has 72 million Muslims," Ben-Eliezer said.

Support for Ayalon has come from his Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) colleague David Rotem, who said that the Deputy Foreign Minister “defended the pride of Israel and Judaism.”