“It’s a very uneasy sort of cohabitation in this region now.”

Majed Hamdan/Associated Press

A New Rift Between Israel and Turkey

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ETHAN BRONNER

Israel’s Arab allies stood behind it in the Gaza war, but Turkey protested in a month of angry remarks capped when the prime minister walked out of a debate.

ISTANBUL — The four daily flights to Tel Aviv are still running. The defense contract signed in December has not been scrapped. But since Israel’s war in Gaza, relations with Turkey, Israel’s closest Muslim ally, have become strained.Israel’s Arab allies stood behind it in the war, but Turkey, a NATO member whose mediating efforts last year brought Israel into indirect talks with Syria, protested every step of the way in a month of angry remarks capped when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stalked off the stage during a debate in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 29. In the week since, both sides have taken pains to mend fences, with officials in Israel and Turkey making conciliatory statements. “Turkey and Israel attribute a special importance to their bilateral relations,” Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Cemil Cicek, said this week. “We want to protect our relations with this country.”But both sides acknowledge that some damage has been done, and while the full implications for the relationship are still unknown, many political analysts say they sense a shift.“It’s not a business-as-usual relationship anymore,” said Cengiz Candar, a columnist for Radikal, a Turkish daily. “It’s a very uneasy sort of cohabitation in this region now.”