To speak about further escalation of Turkish-Israeli relations is too early: expert

Stable tension exists today between Turkey and Israel but it is too early to predict further escalation of relations, expert in Turkish affairs Ruben Melkonyan told Aysor.am, referring to the twitter debate between Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and son of Israeli premier Yair Netanyahu.

The younger Netanyahu made a post in Twitter relating to Turkey and mentioning about the Armenian genocide.

“I will remind him that Istanbul is actually a city called Constantinople! The capital of the Byzantine empire and center of orthodox Christianity for more then a thousand years before Turkish occupation!” the younger Netanyahu tweeted.

“I’ll also remind him the genocide Turkey had done against Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians! They ethically cleansed all Christians from Asia Minor!” he wrote in a subsequent post.

Melkonyan at the same time noted that the Turkish-Israeli relations may be viewed in two platforms: the first one is that they are tied with serious ties based on common interests.

“Let us not forget that there was an interesting cooperation core in the format of USA-Turkey-Israel,” he said, adding that tension has been noticed in the Turkish-Israeli relations in the official rhetoric as well and even in some steps like for instance the case in Davos which got the name “One minute” when Erdogan was interrupting the Israeli leader, saying “one minute” and criticizing him rather toughly. Melkonyan said the twitter scandal is just another incident in Turkish-Israeli relations.