France24, France
Aug 23 2007

Israel’s Peres reassures Turkey over ties

Israeli President Shimon Peres phoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday to assure him of Israel’s desire to
maintain close ties with its Muslim ally, an aide to Erdogan said.

The call followed a decision on Tuesday by a prominent US Jewish
group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), to term as genocide the mass
killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, a label Ankara
fiercely rejects.

"Peres emphasized the importance Israel places on relations with
Turkey," Erdogan’s aide told AFP. "It was a very fruitful
discussion."

On Wednesday, the Israeli embassy here said the Jewish state
acknowledges the "horrible events" and the "terrible suffering" the
Armenians endured, but urged Jews not to take sides.

"Over the years the subject, undesirably, has become a loaded
political issue between the Armenians and the Turks.

"Israel, therefore, asks that neither one side nor the other be taken
and that no definitions be made of what happened. We hope that both
sides will enter into an open dialogue which will enable them to heal
the wounds," it said.

Turkey has been Israel’s main regional ally since 1996 when the two
signed a military cooperation deal, much to the anger of Arab
countries and Iran.

But the US-led war in Iraq and Israel’s relations with the
Palestinians have led to a rise in anti-US and anti-Israeli sentiment
in the Turkish public opinion.

Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government also angered Israel in 2006 when
it hosted Hamas officials in Ankara in what it defended as a bid to
convince the radical Islamist group to renounce violence.