Israeli General says Turkey Unreliable

The prospects of reconciliation between Israel and Turkey resulting in gas deals suffered a blow March 17 when the deputy chief of staff of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that Turkey's president and his Islamist party were not reliable partners for a reconciliation agreement. "As long as Turkey is ruled by a party with a strong Islamist orientation, by a ruler as adversarial as Erdogan, as long as this is the situation – we can expect problems and challenges,” Major General Yair Golan was quoted as saying by Haaretz daily, speaking at a conference at Bar-Ilan University.

Golan said that Turkey is a large and powerful country and emphasized that it is also "a very problematic factor" in the eastern Mediterranean and for Israel.

On the other hand Golan, who heads the Israeli side of coordination committee between the IDF and the Russian forces in Syria, praised the cooperation between the two sides. "It's not necessarily bad," he said, relating to the presence of Russian forces in Syria.

Russia is said to be trying to block the reconciliation agreement between Turkey and Israel. One of its motives is to eliminate gas sales from Israel to Turkey which would reduce its revenues from the Turkish market as well as reduce its leverage over Turkey and diminish its role in the region.

Ya'acov Zalel