Diplomacy Can Be Ugly

The friction between Turkey and Israel is a diplomatic problem being expressed in the media as a naval confrontation. This article by Reuters is a great example how the problem is being exaggerated.

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.

The resources at sea being discussed in the article are actually claimed territorially by Greece, Lebanon, Turkey, and Israel. There is no impending drilling about to create a confrontation, that is still well off into the future and the diplomatic process has plenty of time to work itself out. The resources issue is also a side show to what this is really about - Turkey flexing some regional muscle over Israel for political points towards being seen as a regional leader in the Muslim world.

If you read the Reuters article in full, you will note that Turkey is mentioned as a member of NATO no less than three times - indeed it sticks out as something the article author is trying to emphasize for impact to the reader. What isn't said in the article is that according to international law, if Turkey runs the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, Turkey would be committing an act of war against Israel and would forfeit the privileges for mutual defense in the NATO charter. A NATO nation can't conduct an act of war against another nation then invoke the mutual defense clause of the NATO charter for assistance.

While the naval blockade may or may not be an act of war against Gaza under any legal definition (because Gaza isn't recognized as a state), a naval blockade is in itself an act of war by legal definition. Turkey simply doesn't have much legal ground to stand on should Turkey provoke a military conflict, and it is difficult to see a scenario where anyone in NATO comes to the military aid of Turkey if they intentionally provoke Israel like Erdogan describes.

But the bigger point is that Israel doesn't want to fight Turkey, and despite the public rhetoric, it is hard to believe Turkey would risk a major military incident with Israel over the Palestinians or has any desire to engage in a military contest with Israel.

Measuring military power of various nations isn't really my style, but let me be clear - the Israeli Air Force is elite. Any nation in the world that fights the Israeli Air Force is going to take enormous punishment for it in a war, and by 'any nation' I am absolutely including the United States. Erdogan might be stupid enough to think otherwise, but no one in the Turkish military is that stupid.

What I am watching for in this political clash is whether this turns into a real escort operation for the Turkish Navy. If it does, the next question becomes whether Turkey will send more than one warship. If Turkey sends more than one warship, the situation has the potential to get ugly. If Turkey only sends one warship, it is unlikely anything happens and if something does happen, it will be against the flotilla ship and Erdogan will get embarrassed. I can't imagine Turkey would send more than one warship in support of Erdogan's political agenda though - the political gains simply aren't there for Turkey to push Israel into any kind of military conflict.

The problem Erdogan faces is that it is hard to imagine any Turkish Navy Captain would be foolish enough to take a warship into the territorial waters of Gaza, which under the Interim Agreement is considered Israeli controlled waters. Once inside those territorial waters, Israel would be within their legal rights to sink the Turkish Navy vessel. That won't happen.

Once the flotilla vessel enters those territorial waters though, Israel will seize the ship. Because Israel will have a huge show of force present, the Turkish Navy would be forced to watch from outside territorial waters. The result of any confrontation will be plenty of very loud international political outrage against Israel, but because the flotilla ship will never reach Gaza, Erdogan would find himself drowning under the political pressure of starting an incident with Israel he couldn't win, and at the same time he would find himself without any international support except in words only.

If Turkey sends more than one ship... well, everything I have said is nonsense. That would be a situation ripe with miscalculation and I am never surprised anymore by anything Israel does. My sense is that with the recent agreement with the US to install the X-Band BMD radar in Turkey - Washington intends to give Turkey plenty of political space in their dealings with Israel - right up to but not beyond the point where confrontation turns into conflict.

Unfortunately, that is also usually the point where miscalculations tend to occur. We'll see. This emerging possible naval confrontation has the right stuff to generate a lot of noise in the media, but when it is over I suspect very little will actually happen.