Turkey and Israel are the closest they have been to a normalization of bilateral relations since the Mavi Marmara incident, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
“There has recently been a momentum and new approach in compensation talks. We could say that most of the differences have been removed recently in these discussions,” Davutoglu said in a televised interview, daily newspaper Hurriyet reported.
Stressing that there are “positive developments” in compensation talks and that “serious progress has een achieved,” he refrained from giving an exact time for a finalization of the process.
The relations between Turkey and Israel deteriorated in 2010 after Israeli commandos staged a raid on a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists seeking to violate Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.
One of the ships in the flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, refused Israeli orders to dock at the Ashdod Port. The commandos then boarded it, encountering violence from the members of the extremist IHH organization who were on board and who attacked them with clubs and knives. The soldiers had no choice but to open fire, killing nine who were on board.
When Israel refused Turkey’s demands to apologize for raiding the Marmara, Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Israel and expelled the Israeli ambassador in Ankara.
Under pressure from US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized last March to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the deaths of the nine Turks and agreed to compensate their families while Erdogan promised to cancel the legal proceedings his country launched against Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officials.
Davutoglu refrained from telling the amount of compensation being discussed for the victims of the Mavi Marmara, but did say that the difference in amount between what Turkey demanded and Israel offered had narrowed compared to May 2013.
Israeli and Turkish officials had been talking for months regarding this compensation. Israel reportedly offered to pay $20 million to the families.
In addition to a compensation for the victims, Ankara has also demanded that Israel ease the blockade on Gaza as a pre-condition for the normalization of ties.
Davutoglu did not give a time frame for the reciprocal appointing of ambassadors, but said Turkey’s representation in Israel would be “significant” in order to “monitor and to coordinate humanitarian aid to Gaza.”