Turkey has expelled the Israeli ambassador, following the killings of dozens of Palestinian protesters by Israeli forces after the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Earlier Turkey also recalled its own ambassadors from both the US  and Israel. But what provoked Turkey to make these contentious moves and what does it stand to gain from both the recalls and the expulsions?  

“(Turkey) is not as good as it used to be in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, therefore from my perspective, Turkey is searching for its own identity and its struggle for power,” commented Professor Tugrul Keskin from the Center for Turkish Studies at Shanghai University. 

Professor Keskin continued to note that the expulsion for Turkey was not just a method to seek more power but also a way to tackle other underlying issues with the US such as conflicting opinions about the Kurdish force in the region. “The main conflict between the US and Turkey is not about democracy or human rights. It’s about the rather diverged interests of the US, Turkey and Europe. The main issue between Turkey and the West is the Kurdish issue and the Kurdish nation as an independent state,” Professor Keskin said. 

In terms of Turkey’s interest in the Palestine issue, many people believe that Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has much more to gain domestically from the recent expulsions.

“The Palestinian issue has become very much domesticized in all the elections. Exactly what happened since Monday (in Jerusalem) has proven a good opportunity for Turkish President Erdogan to use toward his own domestic elections,” Professor Huseyin Bagci, a political analyst at the Middle East Technical University, said during an interview with CGTN.

“It is the first diplomatic action from Turkey to send the Israeli ambassador back to his country, and this is the beginning of a big diplomatic crisis in the long term,” he added. 

Professor Bagci is also confident that after the expulsion, Turkey’s relationship with the US will decay. “President Erdogan is in a very difficult position in terms of tourism. If Turkey is declared by Israel and America as the next “enemy” (after Iran), it will face a lot of (problems for) travelers,” he explained.

(Cover Photo: The Israeli ambassador to Turkey, Eitan Naeh, has been recently expelled from the country. /CFP photo)