Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday he wanted to continue relations
His country is with Israel on the basis of a mutual understanding, regardless of the outcome of the elections, at a time when former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be returning to power.
Erdogan’s statement, in an interview with Turkish broadcaster ATV, came in the midst of an improvement in long-strained relations between Turkey and Israel.
Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog visited Ankara this year, the first visit by an Israeli leader to Turkey since 2008.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu appeared on the verge of returning to power in light of the preliminary results of the legislative elections, which show the progress of his alliance with the far right by a small margin.
Data from the Central Election Commission, after counting 87.2 percent of the votes, showed that former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, the right-wing party, won 65 seats. This authorizes Netanyahu to return to the forefront of the political arena.
“We are very close to a major victory,” Netanyahu, 73, a veteran right-wing right-wing leader, told his supporters in Jerusalem.
The vote count so far shows that Netanyahu’s Likud party won 32 seats, Lapid’s party 24 seats, the “Religious Zionism” coalition led by far-right Ben Gvir has 14 seats and the “National Camp” led by Benny Gantz has 12 seats, in addition to the “National Camp” led by Benny Gantz, Shas, the Eastern Orthodox Church, has won 12 seats.
In contrast, the ultra-Orthodox Judaism party of the United Torah for Western Jews won 8 seats, the Front and Al-Arabiya for Change 5 seats (Ayman Odeh and Ahmed Tibi), the United List led by Mansour Abbas won 5 seats, Yisrael Beitenu 5 seats and the Labor Party seats 4. As for the left-wing Zionist party Meretz, it did not cross the electoral threshold, as did the Democratic National Assembly.
Furthermore, the Jewish Home party led by Ayelet Shaked is not expected to cross the electoral threshold.
In the Israeli proportional system, each electoral list must obtain the electoral threshold, which is 3.25% of the votes that qualify to enter the Knesset with four members at the same time.
