The Mavi Marmara tragedy in May 2010 represented a new low point in Turkish-Israeli relations that have been steadily worsening over the last few years. The leaders of both countries have on numerous occasions used rhetoric that disregarded the perceptions and concerns of their counterpart and was perceived as humiliating. Though this rhetoric might have originally been intended for their domestic audiences, it has severely influenced their bilateral relations. Additional regional factors have also had a negative effect on the current state of affairs between Israel and Turkey.

This policy brief explores what went wrong between Turkey and Israel: it analyzes the sources of tension and strategies for its alleviation. The authors believe that it is in the interest not only of the two countries in question, but of their wider neighborhood as well, to have a more positive working Turkish-Israeli relationship. The paper argues that even if the political relations are strained, other levels of the relations need to be reexamined.