I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the news that Turkish indictments were forthcoming against Israeli soldiers over the Mavi Marmara flotilla. Apparently, Turkey has decided to set its sights very high by returning indictments against the top Israeli military leadership – former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Navy head Eliezer Marom, and military and air force intelligence chiefs Amos Yadlin and Avishai Levi. This is not only an exercise in futility, as none of these people stand any chance of ever appearing before a Turkish court, but a symbolic demonstration that makes Turkey look like it is not serious about justice and is rather seeking to prolong its feud with Israel. I have written before that I understand the anger felt by Turks and realize why they do not want to give Israel a free pass over the flotilla incident, but at the same time there is holding people accountable and then there is pure posturing. This falls squarely into the latter category. If Turkey had made a good faith effort to identify the actual IDF soldiers on board the ship it would be one thing, as those are the people with whom they have an actual beef. But to indict Israel’s top military and intelligence leadership? That is not a serious effort but a publicity shot across the bow. It is not designed to accomplish anything tangible or substantive, and in fact makes it that much harder for Turkey and Israel to come to an agreement acceptable to both sides that will amicably settle their differences.

As I wrote just yesterday, I am convinced that there is a power struggle of sorts going on behind the scenes at the upper echelons of Turkish government, with some pushing hard to maintain a muscular Turkish nationalism that widens the rift with Israel and with others looking to dial things back. There are too many conflicting signals being issued at the same time, and I think that there must be back channel efforts to reconcile with the Israelis while other attempts are being made to sabotage any progress that is made. There must be some high ranking Turkish officials beginning to wonder how the constant feuding with Israel is actually benefitting Turkey at this point, and it is obviously a good question for them to ask themselves. As I view things from my limited vantage point, the possible domestic politics advantage is being far outpaced by foreign policy problems that Turkey is creating for itself. Whether it is Davutoğlu or someone else who is continuing to push for a hard and unrelenting line against Israel, it is now crossing over into the absurd. Turkey is no closer to getting an Israeli apology or compensation, and wasn’t that the whole stated point to begin with?