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Senior Israeli Diplomat: Turkey Chose to Downgrade Relations with Israel
(Hurriyet-Turkey) Irem Koker - Ankara lost a great opportunity by not initiating contact with Israel during the Gaza crisis last November, a senior Israeli diplomat has said. "The Turkish government could have played a mediating role but it refused to do so," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor recently told Hurriyet. When reminded about a recent statement by Israel's deputy foreign minister that Israel was ready to send a letter - such as the one Washington recently sent to Islamabad over the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers - in order to mend ties with Turkey after the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, Palmor said: "I was quite surprised that Danny Ayalon's statement made the headlines because he said nothing new. He only repeated what [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman said three or four months ago....He said he was willing to accept the same formula that the Americans used with Pakistan." "There was a compromise on the table. Then we suspected that this would not lead us to restore relations, because there was a deliberate intention on the part of the Turkish government to downgrade relations with Israel as much as possible. This was a strategic choice by the Turkish government."