Restriction of Hamas activities is a condition for Turkey to improve relations with Tel Aviv.
One of the regime’s conditions for normalizing relations with Ankara is the restriction of Hamas activities in Turkey, Tel Aviv officials said.
Coinciding with Turkey’s announcement of the Israeli president’s imminent visit to the country, Channel 13 Israeli television reported today (Thursday), quoting a senior Zionist official, that Tel Aviv had set conditions for normalizing relations with Ankara.
Channel 13 quoted the official as saying that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent moves to approach Tel Aviv to improve relations with the new US administration were made in the run-up to the Turkish elections. The unnamed Zionist official added: “The leader of an important Islamic country like Turkey has established relations with Israel, so there will be no choice but to respond positively to this country.”
According to Quds News Agency, quoting Channel 13, the Zionist official has sent messages to Greece and Cyprus in recent weeks, saying that convergence with Turkey would not hurt their partnership with Tel Aviv. “Some Israeli officials believe that Erdogan’s moves to reform relations with Israel are a means of improving relations with the Biden government before the election and at a time of growing economic crisis,” he said.
According to a Channel 13 correspondent, one of the main obstacles to normalizing relations between the two sides is relations between Ankara and the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). He added, quoting some Tel Aviv officials, that the Zionist regime’s internal security apparatus had emphasized in internal talks on Turkey that any process to normalize relations should include restricting Hamas’s activities in Turkey.
The report comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in a televised interview on Thursday morning that the Israeli president’s imminent visit to Turkey. In a televised interview, Erdogan announced that Tel Aviv regime leader Ishaq Herzog would visit Turkey in early February, marking the beginning of a new phase in bilateral relations. Earlier, in a meeting with a group of rabbis, Erdogan stressed the importance of relations with the Zionist regime.
