Turkey has not yet halted the loading of oil tankers at Ceyhan port bound for Israel, according to Israeli sources. Azerbaijan is an important supplier of oil to Israel, via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, at the end of which the oil is loaded onto tankers that bring it to Haifa.
In January this year, Israel topped the list of destinations for Azerbaijan’s oil, with 523,500 tonnes worth $297 million. In the period January to November 2023, Israel was in second place, with 2.24 million tonnes worth $1.38 billion. Other significant suppliers of oil to Israel are Kazakhstan and Nigeria.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has excellent relations with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but also with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who would not wish to cause direct harm to Azerbaijan’s interests.
In general, relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan are close, and are based on the idea of “one nation, two states”. The Azerbaijanis are a Turkic people, like the Kazakhs and the Uzbeks, but Azerbaijan has the deepest relations with Turkey.
At the same time, Israel is a very important supplier of arms to Azerbaijan. Israeli weaponry exported to that country includes Israel Aerospace Industries’ Harop loitering munition, LORA (long-range artillery) system, and Barak MX surface-to-air missile system, which Azerbaijan bought in November last year for $1.2 billion. Israel Aerospace Industries also sold two satellites to Azerbaijan last October for $120 million.
Israel’s relations with Azerbaijan are the most stable that it has with any Muslim country, and have flourished since 1992. In 1993, Israel inaugurated its embassy in Baku. Relations were originally based on Azerbaijani oil and Israeli arms, but over the years, and particularly since President Ilham Aliyev came to power in 2003, relations have broadened to many other areas, such as education, for example.
A further expression of confidence in the relationship came last year with the opening of the Azerbaijani embassy in Tel Aviv. President Aliyev appointed Mukhtar Mammadov, a well-known figure in Baku and until then minister of education and science, as the first ambassador.
Dean Shmuel Elmas
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on May 5, 2024.
