Israel highlights “great progress” over the past year in bilateral relations with Turkey

Turkish forces detain eight people over alleged Iranian plan to attack Israelis

June 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid, highlighted on Thursday the “great progress” made in the last year in bilateral relations with Turkey, in the framework of a meeting in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Casuvoglu.

“The last year has seen great progress in relations between Israel and Turkey. I have recently arrived in Ankara and I am glad to meet my friend Cavusoglu,” he said on his Twitter account. “We will continue to strengthen cooperation at the political and security levels,” he promised.

The visit took place on a day in which it has emerged that the Turkish security forces arrested eight people last week, including several Iranian citizens, for allegedly planning attacks against Israeli citizens in Turkey, according to the IHA news agency. .

Israeli authorities have repeatedly asked their citizens in recent months to avoid travel to Turkey in light of Tehran’s alleged plans to carry out attacks against them in retaliation for the assassination of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards official.

Lapid’s trip is a new example of the improvement in bilateral relations, reflected in the historic visit to Turkey made in March by the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, after which both he and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, They expressed their hope that it would be a “turning point” to strengthen ties between the two countries.

Relations between the two countries were broken after the death of ten activists in the 2010 assault on the ship ‘Mavi Marmara’, which was part of the so-called Freedom Flotilla and was trying to circumvent the blockade imposed against the Gaza Strip.

Despite the fact that both countries reached an agreement in 2016 to restore their relations, ties have not been fully restored and they even expelled their ambassadors in 2018 due to the repression by the Israeli security forces against thousands of Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip.