New mediator hoping to fix Turkey-Israel relations

ISTANBUL

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The United Kingdom is stepping forward as a mediating force between Israel and Turkey, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz.
 
The reason behind the recent move is reportedly Turkey and Israel’s shared interests in Syria.
 
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is now acting as a third party between the leaders of the two powers in an attempt to find common ground between the former allies.

Cameron reportedly attempted to connect the two leaders by asking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whether or not he had anything to say to his Turkish counterpart ahead of a July 27
meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

While Haaretz did not reveal the details of the message sent by Netanyahu to Erdoğan, it did report that Cameron passed on the information to Erdoğan during their tête-à-tête.
 
The relationship between the two hit a historic low after Israel’s deadly May 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla aid ship that killed eight Turkish and one U.S. citizen of Turkish origin.
 
The attack was the climax in a two-year long saga of rising tensions between Turkey and Israel, during which the former’s prime minister walked out of the Davos Economic Forum in protest at the latter’s president.
 
Turkey has demanded a formal apology from Israel alongside compensation for victims and the families of the dead, but Israel has so far only expressed “regret.”