Turkey’s Rise Sparks New Friendship Between Israel and Greece

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Greece’s leftist Syriza party ditches its antagonism toward Israel and cooperates with Netanyahu’s government as Ankara asserts power in region

By Yaroslav Trofimov

ATHENS—It’s hard to find a better example of how geopolitical realities trump ideology than the blossoming friendship between Israel and Greece.

As the leader of Greece’s leftist Syriza party before gaining office in 2015, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called to expel Israel’s ambassador and close Greek ports to U.S. arms shipments heading to Israel.

Syriza’s leftist allies in Europe still demonize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Many of them back the boycott, sanctions and disinvestment campaign against Israel.

Not Mr. Tsipras—who intensified cooperation with Israel instead. The leaders of Israel, Greece and Cyprus are holding regular trilateral summits—the fourth was in May—and the Israeli air force uses Greek airspace for training. The three countries, plus Egypt, are jointly developing the eastern Mediterranean’s natural-gas reserves.

The key reason for all this: Turkey.

Before Israel’s longstanding friendship with Turkey ruptured in 2010, Israeli jet fighter pilots honed their skills in Turkish skies, and Israel sold Turkey military hardware. Israeli tourists flocked to Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly hard-line foreign policy, which seeks to project Turkey’s power across the region, threatened both Israel and Greece, uniting them like never before. Greece is concerned by Turkish incursions in the disputed areas of the Aegean Sea. Israel and Turkey are at odds over the blockade of the Gaza Strip and over Ankara’s support for the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

Cyprus—divided between the internationally recognized government in the Greek-inhabited south and the Turkish-populated areas occupied by Turkey’s military since 1974—provides an additional bridge, especially as Ankara ramps up its opposition to developing Cypriot offshore gas fields.

“We have to work in such a way as to safeguard strong geostrategic ties with our neighbors, keeping in mind that to our east we are not neighboring Switzerland or Liechtenstein, but a very nervous and in some cases a very aggressive neighbor,” said Yiannis Bournous, Syriza’s head of international relations and Mr. Tsipras’s strategic planning chief.

Another senior Greek official put it more bluntly: “There are two countries that want to be the cops of this region—Turkey and Israel. We have to be friends with at least one.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, Greece was among Israel’s harshest European critics and a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause.

The breakthrough came in 2010, when then-Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and Mr. Netanyahu found themselves visiting Moscow at the same time. At a private dinner in the Russian capital’s Pushkin restaurant, the two men realized how much they could achieve by cooperating, said Arye Mekel, a former Israeli ambassador to Greece.

The following year, Greece provided Israel with a big favor by blocking in Greek ports an international flotilla of boats that aimed to break Israel’s Gaza blockade.

The Israeli Navy stormed a similar pro-Palestinian flotilla organized by Turkish charity in 2010, an incident in which nine Turkish activists were killed. This was the turning point that ruptured the Israeli-Turkish relationship.

“Israel was very grateful because Greece prevented potentially a very big problem for Israel,” said Mr. Mekel, now a fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an Israeli think tank. “Israel needs good friends in the region, and we don’t have very many.”

The center-right government that ruled Greece in 2012-2015 continued Mr. Papandreou’s more Israeli-friendly policy. But when Syriza gained power, Israeli officials started to panic because of the party’s record opposing Israel.

“Syriza was not just anti-Zionist, it followed the most extreme part of the Palestinians,” said Angelos Syrigos, professor of foreign policy and international law at the Panteion University in Athens.

Israeli officials recalled their initial trepidation.

“When Tsipras came to power, many in the Israeli government said: Ah, He’s a leftist, a communist. Many Israelis were very afraid that now relations with Greece will go down,” said Israel’s energy minister Yuval Steinitz, who served as minister of intelligence and strategic affairs in 2015. “But the opposite has happened: we have become very good friends.”

Mr. Tsipras’s decision to embrace a strategic relationship with Israel was a surprise, added Israel’s Minister of Regional Cooperation Tzahi Hanegbi. “But we are happy that sometimes we have surprises that are good and not bad.”

Israel’s cooperation with Greece and Cyprus isn’t directed against Ankara, and Israel would like to revive close ties with Turkey, Mr. Hanegbi said.

“But in the meantime, since there is this tension, we don’t sit back waiting for miracles to happen and we make sure that our ties with other neighboring countries like Cyprus and Greece are enhanced,” he said.

For their part, Greek officials say their partnership with Israel isn’t at the Palestinians’ expense. Athens still champions the creation of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, and consistently votes for the Palestinian cause at the United Nations, they point out. In addition to trilateral summits with Mr. Netanyahu, Greece and Cyprus are also planning a trilateral meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“It is not a volte face. We are not abandoning the Palestinians,” said George Katrougalos, Greece’s alternate minister of foreign affairs. But “we must also take into account our national interests,” he added, which are “to balance the rising influence of Turkey in the area.”

That prioritizing of Greece’s geopolitical interests has caused considerable dismay among Syriza’s allies on the European left, acknowledged Mr. Bournous of Syriza.

“Of course we received criticism,” he said. But none of these “fraternal” parties face the complexities of governing an EU nation, he added. “Spain or Italy or France are not in the geopolitical position of Greece, and the priorities change drastically when you are in this position on the planet, having to cope with many imbalances and many turbulences in the region,” he said. “It’s a different reality.”