Turkey-Israel relations have gone through many ups and downs over the past 75 years but repeatedly proved resilient in the face of challenges. Nonetheless, the current bilateral crisis may be the most serious yet. Following a period of positive momentum, which peaked in September 2023, relations have dramatically deteriorated since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Harsh political rhetoric, limits on direct trade, and a halt to people-to-people exchanges have all taken a toll. Yet despite these growing challenges, the two countries still share many strategic interests; while non-governmental players and key business sectors — which often do not share their national leaderships’ ideologies or value systems — continue to seek ways to bilaterally engage.
Can Turkey-Israel ties survive the current crisis? What would it take to turn the trajectory of relations around? And who could potentially drive positive change on both sides?
The Middle East Institute is pleased to invite you to a virtual panel discussion featuring prominent Israeli, Turkish, and American experts who will seek to answer these and other questions related to the future of Turkey-Israel relations.
Speakers
Dr. Gönül Tol
Director of Turkey Program, Middle East Institute
Dr. Gallia Lindenstrauss
Senior Research Fellow, Institute for National Security Studies
Dr. Arad Nir
Head of the Foreign News Desk, Channel 12 News
Prof. Soli Özel
Senior Lecturer of International Relations, Kadir Has University
Amb. (Ret.) David M. Satterfield
Director, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University
Dr. Nimrod Goren (Moderator)
Senior Fellow for Israeli Affairs, Middle East Institute
Extended Speaker Biographies
Dr. Gönül Tol is the founding Director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program and a senior fellow with the Black Sea Program. She is the author of "Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria." She has taught courses at George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University on Turkey, Islamist movements in Western Europe, world politics, and the Middle East. She has written extensively on Turkey-U.S. relations, Turkish domestic politics, and foreign policy and the Kurdish issue. She is a frequent media commentator.
Dr. Gallia Lindenstrauss is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and editor of the institute’s journal, Strategic Assessment. She specializes in Turkish foreign policy. Her additional research interests are ethnic conflicts, Azerbaijan’s foreign policy, the Cyprus issue, and the Kurds. She has written extensively on these topics and her commentaries and op-eds have appeared in all of the Israeli major media outlets, as well as in international outlets such as National Interest, Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey Analyst and Insight Turkey. Dr. Lindenstrauss completed her Ph.D. in the Department of International Relations at Hebrew University. She formerly lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University, and a visiting fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center
Dr. Arad Nir is Senior International Affairs Correspondent, commentator and head of the Foreign News Desk for Israel TV News Company - Channel 12 News. He focuses on Israel’s regional and international relationships, has a unique interest in Turkish Affairs which he follows intensively, and regularly interviews opinion leaders and senior politicians in Israel and all over the world.
Mr. Soli Özel is a Senior Lecturer of International Relations at Kadir Has University. He holds a BA in Economics from Benningon College (1981) and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-1983). Currently he writes for Deutsche Welle-Turkish, Politikyol and does a weekly commentary on world affairs for Gazete Duvar TV. He is also a contributer to the blog of Institut Montaigne. He held fellowships at Oxford, the EU Institute of Strategic Studies and was a Fisher Family Fellow of the "Future of Diplomacy Program" at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His co-authored book with Michael T. Rock, "Elite Origins of Development and Democracy", was published in December 2023. He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Amb. (Ret.) David M. Satterfield is the Director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and leads the institute's Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East. He is also the Janice and Robert McNair Chair in Public Policy. He has more than four decades of diplomatic and leadership experience, including service as special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Assistant Secretary of State, National Security Council staff director, and ambassador to Lebanon and Turkey and chargé d’affaires in Iraq and Egypt. From October 2023 to May 2024, President Biden appointed him U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues to lead U.S. diplomacy in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Among other honors, Satterfield is the recipient of the highest Department of State recognition as the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Award, the highest award for senior federal executives as the Office of Personnel Management Distinguished Federal Executive Rank Award, as well as the Secretary of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service.
Dr. Nimrod Goren is the Senior Fellow for Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute. Dr. Goren is the President and Founder of Mitvim - The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, Co-Founder of Diplomeds - The Council for Mediterranean Diplomacy, and Co-Chair of a regional initiative at President Isaac Herzog's Israeli Climate Forum. Nimrod is a past recipient of the Victor J. Goldberg Prize for Peace in the Middle East and the Centennial Medal of the Institute of International Education, and was selected as a Vamik Volkan Scholar by the International Dialogue Initiative. He serves on the steering committees of the Geneva Initiative and the Turkish-Israeli Civil Society Forum, and is a member of the Global Diplomacy Lab. Nimrod's fields of expertise include Israel’s foreign policy and regional relations, as well as the Middle East peace process.
(Photo by DAPHNE LEMELIN/AFP via Getty Images)