Turkey has expelled Israel's ambassador to Ankara and suspended all military agreements after a United Nations report on last year's Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish ship failed to elicit an Israeli apology.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Friday his government is reducing its diplomatic presence in Israel to the level of second secretary.
The U.N. report, released hours earlier, concluded that Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip was legal, but that the Israeli government used “excessive and unreasonable” force in stopping the Turkish ship attempting to break the blockade.
The report criticized the loss of life resulting from the Israeli raid as “unacceptable.” It said Israel has not provided a “satisfactory explanation” for the killings of the nine Turks, most of whom it says were “shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range.”
However, the report also found that the Israeli commandos who boarded the Turkish ship used force to protect themselves in response to what it called “significant, organized and violent resistance” from some of the passengers.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul declared the U.N. report “null and void” for Turkey, and criticized it for describing Israel's naval blockade as a legitimate security measure and in line with international law.
Israel has indicated that it accepts the findings of the U.N. report, but reiterated on Friday that will not apologize for the raid. Turkey has long demanded an Israeli apology, compensation for the families of those who died and a scrapping of the blockade. Israel says it has not ruled out expressing regret and offering compensation.
A United Nations spokesman said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “deeply regrets” that the report did not bring Israel and Turkey back together.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the Obama administration hopes the two nations “look for opportunities to improve their longstanding relationship.”
The ship, called the Mavi Marmara, was the largest of six vessels in a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians. The panel said the flotilla organizers “acted recklessly” by trying to breach the Israeli blockade. It also accused Israel of “significant mistreatment” of flotilla passengers after Israeli forces commandeered the vessels in Mediterranean waters off the Israeli coast.
The report's lead authors are former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer and former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The four-member panel also included representatives of the Israeli and Turkish governments.
The report was completed in July but U.N. officials repeatedly have delayed its release to give Israel and Turkey an opportunity to resolve their dispute about the Mavi Marmara incident, which has severely strained relations between the one-time allies.
