Hawzah News Agency - “The Palestine policy is our red line. It is impossible for us to accept Israel’s Palestine policies. Their merciless acts there are unacceptable,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul on Friday.

“If there were no issues at the top level [in Israel], our ties could have been very different,” he said, adding, “We would have liked to bring our ties to a better point.”

Earlier this month, Al-Monitor reported that Turkey had selected a new ambassador to send to Israel after two years, in a move aimed at improving Ankara’s relationship with the United States.

Turkey recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv following the killing of dozens of Palestinian protesters by Israeli forces and the inauguration of the US embassy in al-Quds in May 2018.

Ankara also expelled the Israeli regime’s ambassador, Eitan Na’eh, and its consul in Istanbul.

Israeli-Turkish ties have remained frosty despite a 2016 normalization deal.

In June 2016, the regime of Israel and Turkey reached an agreement on the normalization of their relations six years after an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla killed 10 Turkish activists on the high seas in May 2010.

Ankara had initially reacted with fury. It suspended its military ties with the Israeli regime and expelled the Israeli envoy from Ankara in September 2010 over Tel Aviv’s refusal to apologize for the killings.