Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, the first meeting at this level between Erdogan and an Israeli prime minister since 2008.
The Israeli Prime Minister's office said in a statement that Lapid "raised the issue of missing or captured Israelis, and the importance of returning them to their homes," referring to 4 Israelis affiliated with the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Tel Aviv says that only two of them were soldiers and that they were killed during the 2014 war on the Gaza Strip. Gaza, but Hamas did not reveal any details of their fate.
As well as discussing energy cooperation, the Israeli prime minister expressed his concerns about Iran and thanked the Turkish president for the intelligence cooperation between the two sides, according to the Israeli statement.
On the other hand, the Turkish Anadolu Agency indicated that Erdogan and Lapid held a closed meeting, as part of a series of meetings that the President is holding in New York on the sidelines of the 77th session of the United Nations.
In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Erdogan renewed his demand for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Erdogan called before the United Nations for the establishment of a Palestinian state (European)
The Turkish president expressed his desire to "continue to develop our relations with Israel for the sake of the future, peace and stability, not only for the region, but also for Israel, the Palestinian people and us."
Recent months have witnessed a rapprochement between Ankara and Tel Aviv, and the two sides announced last month that they would reappoint their ambassadors after 4 years of tense relations following Ankara's protest against the killing of dozens of Palestinians by Israeli forces' bullets on the Gaza Strip borders during the "return demonstrations" commemorating the Nakba.
Prior to that, relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv cracked in 2010 after the killing of 10 Turkish civilians in an Israeli raid on the Turkish ship "Mavi Marmara", which was trying to deliver aid and break the Israeli siege imposed on this Palestinian sector.
The day before yesterday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced the nomination of Irit Lilian as ambassador to Ankara, but Turkey has not yet announced the name of its new ambassador in Tel Aviv.