The office of Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi announced on Friday that it had instructed the ministry’s staff to assess the seriousness of the statements of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on improving political relations between their countries.
Israeli officials have begun a process of communication with Ankara in order to positively promote these relations.
A source close to Ashkenazi said that these directives came as a result of a meeting that focused on the Turkish initiative, attended by senior officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Deputy National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office and other senior officials from the Ministry of Security and the Mossad.
The meeting concluded that Erdogan’s statements, in which he said that his country wanted to establish better relations with Israel, came within the framework of efforts made by Azerbaijan to resume relations between the two governments.
Sources who attended the meeting said that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was personally working to mediate between his two allies in the war against Armenia and “has begun to take practical steps” in this direction.
The American Axios website stated on Friday that Israel was moving cautiously towards improving relations with Turkey and that the Israeli government decided to start informal contacts with Ankara in order to assess the sincerity of its intentions.
