BAKU (AFP)–Israel’s hard-liner foreign minister on Tuesday slammed Turkey for what he called its recent “anti-Israeli” stance but said his country would continue efforts to rebuild ties with long-time ally Ankara.
Speaking to Azerbaijan’s Lider television during a visit to Baku, Avigdor Lieberman lashed out at Ankara’s frequent criticisms of Israel. “Every week to sharply condemn Israel, to say Israeli military forces have carried out genocide, to call operations to protect our citizens ‘a crime against humanity.’ … This sharp anti-Israeli line cannot be repeated every week,” he said in remarks translated into Azerbaijani.
“For 10 years we have supported very close and friendly relations with Turkey. The recent changes in Turkey’s foreign policy concepts were unexpected to us and not entirely clear. We are doing everything we can in order to preserve relations at their previous, very trustful level and to maintain close cooperation in all areas,” he added.
“We hope that Turkey from its side will make certain amendments to its foreign policy concept.”
Turkey has been a close military ally of Israel since 1996 but relations between the two countries have been tense in the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, which Turkey vehemently criticized.
Lieberman on Tuesday began a three-day visit to ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey, where he was set to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other top officials.
Israel has been seeking to build closer economic and political ties with mainly Muslim Azerbaijan and the two countries last year signed a series of cooperation agreements during a landmark visit by Israeli President Shimon Peres to the country.
israel and azerbadjan are isolated by international community. israel will take all he/she wants and step aside. aliev must blame himself. remember opening door for all kind of “brokers” to come and help with his nabucco proposal? he could not find a better broker in the entire world.
will armenia be able to benefit from this mistake of azerbadjan?
This is bad news for Armenia.Israel is a major arms producer, they need new markets for their products, they look at it as a business, and since Azerbaijan is rich with petrodollars, the Israelis want some of that cash back in their defence contractors bank accounts, one of whome happens to be the son of their President Shimon Perez.
Was it late March or early April, when Barack went to Turkey and planted seeds of T-A reconciliation (by Axelrod)? Then, at the end of May Perez visits Azerbaijan. It seems, that the idea of linking Artsakh problem with T-A Protocols is implanted into head of Aliev by Perez. Why he would do this? Yes, they calculated the escalation of war rhetoric, first, and failure of Nabuco, second. Both are a major financial substrates to feed on.
It might be that the main irritation of Turkey against Israel is that Israel broke the Nabucco and now (Lieberman) buys it cheep from Azerbaijan (Like a neighbor who scares away all potential buyers of the house on sell, until the owner has to bring price to idiotically low. At that moment the neighbor appears as a buyer and even has an air of a saver!!!)
No one should trust Azerbaijan or Turkey. Turks are no ally of anyone. Turks have massacred Jews, Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Greeks, Rumanians, Bulgarians and etc. and are guilty of Genocide against the Armenians and the mankind. The Turkish foreign policy is to shoot in the empty air and try to find friends among foes. Turkey is a threat to regional peace .
We have known for a long time that Isreal sells weapong to the Azeris
Now that we have the Jewsih people coming to our side
They are now are friends
What hapens to the issue of Weapons that are being sold to the Azeris.
They have to make sales to keep their workers busy
How do we handle this problem
I fully Disagree . This is good news for Armenia. yes, Israel is an arms producer, yes they want new markets for their products, and since Azerbaijan is rich with petrodollars, etc. they are making big enemies of iran by serving the jews. yet jisrael got their ass kicked and hurled out of south lebanon just by few thousand guerillas!!
Let them feel more confident by having some more hardware. and let armeina keep setting more REAL traps and stronger alliances with iran and russia. This will only guarantee their doom in the future conflicts as seen in last artsakh war.