![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/obama-israel.jpg\")
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U.S. President Barack Obama at the Jerusalem Convention Center on March 21, 2013<\/p>\n
From almost the moment President Obama touched down at Ben Gurion International Airport, he began to push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make up with Turkey. The previously good relations broke down in 2010 after the Israelis raided a Turkish flotilla taking aid to the Gaza Strip. Nine activists were killed.<\/p>\n
Since then, the U.S. has pushed Israel and Turkey \u2014\u00a0both close allies \u2014\u00a0to work through their issues. Officials at meetings at nearly every level from the President down brought up rapprochement. Secretary of State John Kerry pressed Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip\u00a0Erdogan on Israel on March 1 on a trip to Ankara.<\/p>\n
By day two of Obama\u2019s visit, Netanyahu had agreed to set up a call with Erdogan. Given the two leaders\u2019 busy schedules, it was not until just as Obama and Netanyahu were arriving back at the airport for the President\u2019s departure to Jordan a day later that a call was possible. Obama and Netanyahu ducked into a trailer off of the red carpet set up for the departure ceremony.<\/p>\n
JASON REED \/ REUTERS<\/p>\n
President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu<\/p>\n
For nearly half an hour, Netanyahu and Erdogan spoke through translators. Obama briefly got on the phone to say hello to Erdogan and ask that they follow up with another call soon. Netanyahu offered Turkey an official apology for the flotilla incident and promised compensation to the victims\u2019 families. He said a subsequent Israeli investigation into the incident revealed \u201cseveral operational errors,\u201d according a statement released by the Israeli embassy in Washington.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu also thanked Erdogan for his remarks condemning anti-Semitism to a Danish paper on March 20. Erdogan had been quoted last month calling Zionism \u201ca crime against humanity,\u201d and he told the Danish paper those remarks had been misinterpreted. During his Ankara visit, Kerry had condemned Erdogan\u2019s statement on Zionism, urging the Turkish Prime Minister both publicly and privately to clarify them.<\/p>\n
The deal was a coup for Obama, on his first foreign visit of his second term. It re-established diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey at a time when the region around them is in turmoil. Both Turkey and Israel border Syria, which is entering its third year of civil war. \u201cWe have regretted for a couple of years now the absence of normal relations between those two countries,\u201d a senior Administration official told reporters on Air Force One en route to Jordan.\u00a0\u201cAnd we have worked with them and urged them both to reach out and try to put their differences between them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Netanyahu on Saturday said the deteriorating situation in Syria and both countries\u2019 concerns about its regime\u2019s chemical and biological weapons prompted the reconciliation. Still, Erdogan warned on Sunday that normalization of relations would not be immediate. Turkey will wait for Israel to pay the families compensation before embassies in either country reopen. Netanyahu told Erdogan that Obama had spent the past two days convincing him of \u201cthe importance of regional relations, the importance of Turkey-Israel cooperation, and that is what led him to take this initiative now,\u201d the Administration official said. Up until the flotilla incident, Turkey and Israel had enjoyed close relations. Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel, though tensions began to fray in 2003 after Erdogan, who has Islamist ties, was elected Prime Minister of Turkey.<\/p>\n
via How Obama Is Reuniting Turkey and Israel | TIME.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. President Barack Obama at the Jerusalem Convention Center on March 21, 2013 From almost the moment President Obama touched down at Ben Gurion International Airport, he began to push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make up with Turkey. The previously good relations broke down in 2010 after the Israelis raided a Turkish flotilla […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":68707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,34],"tags":[145,3803],"class_list":["post-68706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-usa","tag-barack-obama","tag-netanyahu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}