Naval Drill Points to New Mideast Ties

Suggesting a new strategic alliance in the Middle East, the Israeli and Turkish navies, accompanied by a U.S. destroyer, carried out their first joint military maneuvers Wednesday, with a Jordanian admiral observing the search-and-rescue drill.

All four nations rejected Iranian and Arab charges that the exercise with five warships and more than 1,000 sailors in the eastern Mediterranean was aggressive, saying it was strictly humanitarian and had no military objective.

“There is nothing here directed against any other country in the region or elsewhere,” Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai said after his helicopter landed on a participating Israeli ship. “There is no conspiracy. . . . The whole purpose is to create coordination and cooperation for the sake of saving human lives and to work together in the Mediterranean basin.”

Still, the exercise, dubbed “Reliant Mermaid,” might well have been named “Common Enemy.” Security cooperation among Israel, Turkey and the United States clearly illustrated a new power axis in the Middle East and the axiom that “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

Israel, a Jewish state, and Turkey, a secular state with a Muslim majority, signed their first military cooperation agreement in February 1996 and have been forging ties at a rapid pace since. They share a common enemy in Syria, which is sandwiched between the two countries, and both see Iran and Iraq as potential threats.

Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and sees the bilateral relationship as a card it might need to use one day if hostilities arise with its neighbors Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Turkey, whose 27-year-old application to join what is now the European Union was rejected last month, has thrown its lot in with the United States, which has its own conflicts with Iraq and Iran. Israel is the main U.S. ally in the region.

“The maneuvers symbolize the new Middle East, a new balance of power in which Turkey and Israel cooperate and the United States supports this cooperation, despite Arab screams,” said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv.

“Turkey is taking care of its interests and has made a decision not to pay attention to [Arab and Iranian] complaints,” he added. “Whatever the costs, they have made a clear decision that the benefits of an open relationship with Israel are higher.”

That became apparent last month when Turkey made a point of receiving Mordechai in its capital, Ankara, as leaders of the Arab world gathered for an Islamic summit in Tehran. It was the first visit by an Israeli defense minister to Turkey, and the two governments announced an agreement to make mid-range missiles together as the Islamic summit issued a resolution condemning countries that have military relations with Israel.

The new Israeli-Turkish relationship dates to 1994, when Turkey upgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel after the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord and the two countries traded ambassadors.

Israel and Turkey subsequently signed military cooperation agreements for Israel to upgrade U.S.-made Turkish fighter jets with electronic equipment worth nearly $700 million and to use Turkish airspace for military training exercises.

This lets Turkey--which has a checkered human rights record that has, for example, hurt its efforts to gain EU admission--import new Western technology without strings. Israel, meantime, gets to practice the kind of operations it would launch in a war against countries such as Iraq and Iran. Israel’s own airspace is too small for such exercises.

In addition, military analysts believe the agreements include an exchange of military intelligence and give Israel a listening post to monitor activities in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Israel and Syria, technically, remain in a state of war. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and held on to the territory in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Several Palestinian groups opposed to the peace process with Israel are based in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and Syria supports the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas fighting to oust Israel from occupied southern Lebanon.

Turkey and Syria have similar disputes. Syria lays claim to Turkish territory and complains that Ankara’s efforts to dam the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are cutting off a key source of its water. Turkey, meanwhile, accuses Syria of supporting separatist Kurds who have been fighting the Turkish government for 13 years. Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, lives in Damascus. For the first time last year, the Israeli government made statements against the party and in support of Turkey.

“To some extent, radical fundamentalism, Iraqi ambitions and Iranian ambitions are all mutual problems for Turkey and Israel,” said Barry Rubin, a senior fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center.

While Israel and Turkey do not hold exactly the same views on Iraq and Iran, they share suspicions of the two countries.

More important, perhaps, Turkey and Iran are economic competitors. Turkey is seeking U.S.--and, therefore, Israeli--support for construction of gas and oil pipelines from Central Asia and the Caucasus through Turkish territory. Iran also wants those pipelines.

The growing Israeli-Turkish relationship, which also includes about $800 million a year in trade, has drawn Arab countries closer together, including onetime enemies such as Iraq and Syria or Iraq and Iran.

On Wednesday, Iran and most of the Arab world condemned the naval exercises and Jordan’s decision to send an observer, which was portrayed as a prelude to active participation in a U.S.-sponsored military axis taking shape around Israel and Turkey.

Mohammed Salman, the Syrian information minister, described the exercises as “a show of force reminiscent of the climate of the Cold War that is intended to put pressure on Syria.”

The Damascus daily Al Thawra said, “These maneuvers are an encouragement to Israel to persist in its arrogance and blatant aggression against peace, Arab rights and Muslim sanctities.”

Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf urged Turkey last week to withdraw from the drill, calling it “a provocative act against the Arab nation.”

And Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mahmoud Mohammadi as saying the exercises were designed to help Israel increase its influence in the region.

Egypt, which has a peace agreement with Israel, declined to observe the exercise alongside Jordan. Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa on Tuesday described the maneuvers as a “negative step in light of the [Palestinian] peace process stalemate. . . . The timing of these drills is wrong. Egypt does not see any reason for staging them at this time.”

Political analysts said Egypt fears Turkey’s relationship with the United States and its growing political strength in a region where Egypt sees itself as preeminent.

Times staff writer John Daniszewski in Cairo contributed to this report.