Israel's Netanyahu to visit Turkey after 14 years as ties with Erdogan improve

ANKARA — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Turkey next week to meet his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ankara announced on Wednesday. 

The Turkish statement said the two leaders will meet on July 28 to discuss steps to improve cooperation as well as international and regional issues.

The frenemies will meet for the first time in 14 years amid swiftly improving ties after years of locking horns. The last time Netanyahu visited Turkey was in 2009, before a military raid on a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla that killed nine Turkish activists in 2010. After the incident, the two countries severed their diplomatic relations. 

Several efforts to restore ties failed until last year, when Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Turkey in March. Herzog’s visit came as part of Ankara’s regional fence-mending with its former regional foes, including Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Following Herzog’s visit, relations swiftly improved with mutual high-level visits. Turkey and Israel fully reinstated their diplomatic ties by mutually reappointing ambassadors last August. In September of 2022, Erdogan gathered with then-Israeli premier Naftali Bennett in the first meeting of its kind in 14 years in New York. 

Some had speculated that Netanyahu’s reelection in November would derail the positive trajectory, due to their past disagreements. However, Israel was one of the first countries to dispatch rescue workers after the Feb. 6 devastating earthquakes in southeast Turkey. 

Erdogan's office said on Thursday that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas would also pay a visit to Turkey on Tuesday, three days before Netanyahu. Abbas and Erdogan would discuss the latest developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as other bilateral and regional issues, the statement noted.