A year and a bit after the ill-fated interception of the Mavi Marmara that headed last year's flotilla to Gaza, Israel is bracing for another one. This time around, say authorities, they are more prepared, having learned the lessons from operations to public relations and media. (We'll get back to that second point later.)

Israel launched a diplomatic, legal and bureaucratic offensive to prevent the flotilla well in advance and for months has been appealing to governments to block their citizens' efforts to participate, with a certain degree of success. Easing restrictions on goods entering Gaza certainly helped, as has the recent Egyptian decision to open the Raffah crossing, which Israel did not like but quickly recognized as advantageous in this context.

The ships are supposed to rendevous in the Mediterranean and then sail to Gaza but some of the likely candidates in the region are dropping out. Cyprus has announced it will not let the ships in, Greece will let them in but is stalling them with red tape at Israel's request, activists complain. Greece has its own issues this week and will have limited energy to spend on this, one way or the other.

Elsewhere in Europe, delegations met with problems as insurance companies were reluctant to issue policies for the ships and their passengers, after an Israeli legal group, Shurat Hadin, sent letters to the world's leading marine insurance companies advising them they could be held accountable for damages and complicit to violating the law. Other initiatives seek to block satellite communications services to the ships.

The Turkey-based IHH was to be the biggest contingent of the flotilla, its massive passenger ship the largest by far of the dozens of vessels originally slated to sail. Last week the organization announced the ship was staying home.

Icy relations between Israel and Turkey, once-tight allies, are thawing out these days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Turkish Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan on his reelection, then deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon reached out to Turkish journalists and vice prime minister Moshe Yaalon was dispatched abroad for discreet talks with Turkish counterparts.

With Syria's troubles spilling into its backyard, Turkey may have bigger fish to fry at this time -- and both countries seem keen to work things out in advance of the United Nations report on the 2010 flotilla. Turkey was not impressed with the early draft and Israeli media suggest the final report, currently due early July, is still pretty critical of Turkey. And Israel, for its part, always needs all the friends it can get.

In recent weeks, the military completed a series of comprehensive drills for intercepting the next flotilla. Netanyahu is determined to uphold the naval blockade, which Israel says aims only to prevent gunrunning to Hamas-ruled Gaza and not against Palestinian civilians. On Monday, the security cabinet approved the operational plan presented by the army.

Israel has reached understandings with Egypt about the ships docking in El Arish and inspecting the cargo before transfer to Gaza by land in case participants decline Israel's invitation to dock at its Ashdod port -- as expected. There's no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, repeat Israeli spokespeople, who call the flotilla a provocation.

The organizers and activists are equally determined to sail for Gaza and are undeterred by the difficulties. And if Israel has eased up some on Gaza, well, if anything, this just proves flotillas work, says the Free Gaza movement . At a news conference in Athens on Monday, organizers said the 10 ships taking part in the voyage would gather at sea toward the weekend before heading to Gaza.

Meanwhile, until any encounter at sea, the skirmish is being waged on YouTube and all sides are uploading fast and furious -- some straightforward, others kind of clever.

And back to that media lesson learned. One of the main problems Israel had getting its message across last time (besides the message) was the long delay in releasing timely visual images and information from the scene while the operation was still ongoing, leaving the media stage to activists and semi-professionals and an anti-Israeli angle. For weeks, Israeli officials have been stressing the importance of the media battlefield and assuring outlets that professional and credible material will be much more timely.

That's good. Less good was the letter from Government Press Office director Oren Helman on Sunday, warning foreign press they could be deported and banned from working in Israel for 10 years if they participated in the flotilla. Besides infuriating both local and international media, the move seems to have embarassed Netanyahu, who ordered the directive be rethought.

-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem 

Video, from top: An Israeli Defense Forces video explains the Gaza naval blockade from the official Israeli perspective; activist Yonatan Shapira, an Israeli combat pilot who has become an outspoken critic of his county's policies, discusses his reasons for joining the flotilla. Credit: YouTube

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-- The Foreign Staff of the Los Angeles Times

As a tireless advocate for the disabled, Safak Pavey toured the world convincing reluctant governments to sign and ratify the United Nations convention guaranteeing rights for people with disabilities.

Now, as a newly elected opposition member of the Turkish Parliament, she’ll have to convince her own government, which ratified the Convention in 2009, to actually implement it.

Pavey, 34, is one of four disabled candidates to join the 550-member parliament, having lost her left arm and leg in a train accident.  But she ran as a candidate from the center-left Republican People’s Party, skipping the required (but inevitably ignored) quota that calls for 4% of government positions to be filled by persons with disabilities.  The daughter of one of Turkey’s most prominent investigative journalists, Ayse Onal, and a former art student, Pavey started stirring up trouble the night of the elections, even before the last vote was counted.

Appearing on a local talk show with Tülay Kaynarca, an MP from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) who has also worked on disability, she roundly objected when Kaynarca boasted of the achievements of AKP’s 2005 Law on Disability.

“This law has been violated today,” Pavey corrected her, referring to the fact that ballots were still not accessible to the visually impaired.  “You had six years to work on these ballot papers, and yet you violated your own law.”

While Iran has welcomed uprisings against Western-backed regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, it dealt harshly with its own protesters and has been worried about recent events in Syria. Moreover, countries that threw out pro-Western dictators are not moving closer to Iran.

Egypt's and Tunisia’s future foreign policies are more likely to resemble Turkey's in becoming more independent while remaining allied with the West. And Iran's soft power has decreased as its regime looks increasingly repressive and new models of revolutionary success have emerged in Tunisia, Egypt, and other parts of the Arab world.   

Turkey, for its part, bungled the opportunity to take advantage of this historic shift to bolster its influence in the Arab world. The Arab uprisings are effectively calling for the Arab world to be more like Turkey: democratic, with a vibrant civil society, political pluralism, secularism alongside Islam, and a productive and fairly balanced economy. However, after expressing clear support for Egyptian protesters, Turkey has hedged its bets in Libya and Syria.

Is Turkey's role in the Middle East centrist, or just plain cynical?

Ankara's arms trade with Middle Eastern and North African countries is thriving, according to local reports, despite popular uprisings across the region against governments described by the protest movement and others as repressive and corrupt.

One senior procurement official with knowledge of defense contracts described the current industry climate as "business as usual" to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News.

"Egypt is a market and partner with previously signed contracts," he said.

"Tunisia and Libya were prospective markets. They still are for the longer term," he added. "As the dust settles we will roll up our sleeves to help the [Turkish] industry for new contracts...future contracts will come up as soon as stability has been restored."

Turkey's total arms exports are expected to reach $1.5 billion this year, with the Middle East and North Africa accounting for a significant chunk.

Al Jazeera posted a written statement Friday from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan concerning the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

"We hope The Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will adopt a common sense approach and under this new administration organize free and fair elections," Erdogan's statement said. "It should hand over power in as short a time frame as possible. Since the beginning of the mass protests in Egypt, Turkey has supported the legitimate demands of our brother Egyptians for democracy and freedom. The country should now move peacefully towards a new order that is pluralist, representative, and upholds human rights."

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Hosni Mubarak steps down

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—  Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with a military guard in the background, welcomes Crown Prince of Bahrain Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa before their meeting in Ankara on Tuesday. Credit: Reuters

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sided with the Egyptian protesters against their president in a televised speech on Tuesday in which he rebuked Hosni Mubarak and urged him to take a bold step before more blood is spilled.

"I am saying this clearly: You must be the first to take a step for Egypt's peace, security and stability," Erdogan said, addressing the Egyptian president during his speech before the Turkish parliament.

He spoke as hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square, demanding that Mubarak leave the government and even the country.

"In our world today, freedoms can no longer be postponed or ignored," Erdogan said. "We hope that these incidents come to an end as soon as possible, without leading to great suffering, and that the people's legitimate and sensible demands are met."

Could Rachid Ghannouchi be Tunisia's Khomeini?

The exiled sheik returned to his homeland on Sunday after the country's Western-backed secular autocrat was ousted by a nationwide popular uprising.

Over 1,000 supporters turned out at the airport in Tunis to welcome Ghannouchi, the leader of the Nahda Islamist party, which was outlawed and brutally suppressed by ousted President Zine el Abidine ben Ali after it came in second to the ruling party in the 1989 elections with 17% of the vote, according to the BBC.

Although Ghannouchi has been living in exile in London for over two decades, his party and supporters were able to organize an impressive turnout with crowds chanting religious hymns and Koranic verses.

Huge gas fields discovered recently under the Mediterranean seabed have raised high hopes in Israel, a small, high-consumption country seeking alternative energy resources and a greater degree of
  independence from imports.

In a different geopolitical reality, the discovery could benefit the whole region — if it was on speaking terms. Everyone wants to tap natural resources — but this one taps into standing regional squabbles.

Israel and Lebanon, for example. The deposits extend into areas controlled by Lebanon, and it has accused Israel of moving in on its natural resources. Not so, says  Israel, which maintains that the fields lie between its territory and Cyprus.  Israel's minister of national infrastructures, Uzi Landau, even said Israel would "not hesitate to use force" to protect the fields and uphold international maritime law.

Ismail is 38, but with his cropped gray hair and deep wrinkles, he looks closer to 58. He is the busboy at a patisserie in a Turkish town, but he may be the only busboy there who can quote 17th century poets. Ismail is a political refugee from Iran.

He was working on Kurban Bayram, however, the Islamic holiday celebrating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son (a holiday known in Arabic as Eid al-Adha and Persian as Eid Ghorban). In Turkey, and especially in the city of Afyon, the holiday is usually observed by families eating together and going to their grandparents' house.

So it is strange when someone is idling on the street, drinking tea alone with no family to be found.

“They're all in Tehran,” he said.

Nearly 200 mostly military personnel accused of plotting to bomb mosques and assassinate journalists as part of a plan to overthrow the government went on trial Thursday in Istanbul in a milestone case many observers have characterized as a key step in the process to demilitarize Turkish politics.

The alleged coup, dubbed the "sledgehammer" plot, was reportedly planned for 2003 but only came to light in February of this year when the Turkish newspaper Taraf obtained documents it claimed laid out a detailed plan for overthrowing the government.

According to the Taraf report, the alleged coup-plotters intended to sow unrest by blowing up two Istanbul mosques and provoking the Greek military into shooting down a Turkish fighter jet. They are also accused of planning to assassinate 19 journalists, arrest 36 others and “make use of” 137 others.

 "The relationship [between the civilian and military branches of government] is normalizing, and Turkey is in a process of transition from a tutelary democracy controlled by the military to a normal democracy," Sahin Alpay, a senior lecturer in political science at Bahcesehir University, told Babylon and Beyond. "There is public support also in the country for normal role for the military ... as a normal, professional army."

As Turkey heads toward national elections next year, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) finds itself in a strong position. A major test for the AKP and opposition parties was the referendum in September — the results constituted a significant defeat for the opposition.

[Editor's note: Analysts of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are included among contributors to Babylon & Beyond. Carnegie is renowned for its political, economic and social analysis of the Middle East. Views represented are the author's own.]

The opposition’s decision to turn the referendum into a vote on the AKP — a major strategic error — leaves the AKP in great shape for the elections slated for next summer. And if the current projections hold, the government will be in a good position to deal with Turkey’s unresolved internal issues, including the Kurdish question, and rewrite the constitution.

The AKP enjoys several advantages as next summer’s elections approach. Turkey’s strong economic performance has improved the AKP’s popularity, as the ruling party is widely credited for its market-friendly policies. Although unemployment remains high in Turkey, the country managed the global crisis better than most and enjoys excellent prospects compared with the rest of the world.