The State Department has seemingly confirmed speculation, first reported yesterday by The Hill, to the effect that Secretary of State John Kerry is traveling to the Middle East this weekend in part to bolster fraying reconciliation efforts between Israel and Turkey. Journalists yesterday pressed State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland over backsliding by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

QUESTION: All right. My last one on this is just going to be about the Turkey-Israel rapprochement.

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: Are you satisfied with how that’s going so far, or is part of what the Secretary is doing going to kind of – I don’t know, not – maybe not knock heads together, but to make sure that that rapprochement continues along the lines that it was envisioned? Which it hasn’t so far.

MS. NULAND: Well, thank you for that, Matt. That was the second piece that the President announced after the warming between Israel and Turkey was announced, was that he had – he asked Secretary Kerry to continue to work with both parties to try to strengthen that initial warming, to try to deepen it into a full normalization, not only in the interest of our two allies but in the interest of all of the challenges that they share and that we share with them in that neighborhood.

So by going to Istanbul first to see Turkish officials and then going on to Israel, the Secretary will also have an opportunity to spur both sides to continue to take steps to deepen their normalization and to work well together.

QUESTION: But I guess my question was: Are you satisfied with the way it’s going so far? Because the Turks seem to have backed down or seem to have backed away from what was apparently their initial promise or pledge.

MS. NULAND: I think we’re pleased with the initial steps that were taken in the context of the President’s diplomacy and the President’s visit. We need to now see further steps on both sides.

The Washington Post in recent days has criticized Erdogan for “undiplomatically crowing” after he was manuevered into accepting a limited Israeli apology — which he had repeatedly rejected over the course of months — in exchange for restoring ties between Turkey and Israel. Ankara froze its relationship with the Jewish state in the aftermath of Israel’s 2010 interception of a Turkish vessel seeking to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Members of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) — a group designated as a terror organization by the Netherlands and Germany — who were aboard the MV Mavi Marmara attacked Israeli commandos who boarded the ship, and nine died in the ensuing fighting.

[Photo: Loren / Wiki Commons]