As long as the Bashar Al-Assad regime remained in power, the tension between Turkey and Israel was largely understood through the Palestinian question, Hamas, the war in Gaza, and the mutual harsh rhetoric between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For this reason, the rivalry between the two countries was mostly assessed as an ideological and diplomatic conflict.
However, the collapse of the Assad regime and the takeover of power in Damascus by the new administration led by Ahmed Al-Sharaa fundamentally changed the strategic equation between Turkey and Israel. Syria, which for years had been under Iran’s influence, has emerged as a new geopolitical arena in which Ankara’s political, military, and strategic influence is rapidly increasing. This development has made more visible the strategic divergence that has long existed between Turkey and Israel but had largely remained in the background.
Today, the central strategic disagreement between Turkey and Israel extends far beyond Gaza. The real question is by which regional power, in line with which security doctrine and which political vision, post-Iran Syria will be shaped. The rivalry between Ankara and Israel is increasingly moving from Gaza to Damascus.
The weakening of the system of influence that Iran built over many years in Ba’athist ruled Syria did not merely create a power vacuum. It also brought to the agenda the question of who would fill that vacuum. While Turkey has become one of the strongest external backers of the new Damascus administration, Israel has turned toward a strategy of preventing the emergence, on its northern borders, of a new and centralized military structure that could pose a threat to it in the future.
The fact that both Ankara and Israel are pleased by Iran’s weakening has not turned the two countries into natural allies. On the contrary, the decline of the common rival has revealed the quite different visions Turkey and Israel hold regarding Syria’s future.
Turkey’s Objectives in Syria Extend Beyond the PKK and the YPG…
Many assessments in the West reduce Turkey’s Syria policy to the PKK and YPG threat. Ankara views the YPG as the Syrian branch of the PKK, the armed Kurdish movement it has been fighting for more than 40 years, and regards the organization’s establishment of a permanent military and political structure along the Turkish border as a national security threat.
A significant portion of the cross border operations Turkey has carried out since 2016 aimed to push this threat away from the Turkish border.
Ankara has also opposed the continued existence of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as an independent military structure and has adopted a strategy in favor of these forces being fully integrated into the central Syrian state.
However, tying Turkey’s Syria strategy solely to border security is a serious omission.
Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s leadership also aims to be a decisive actor in Syria’s political, military and economic reconstruction. Turkey supported for years the Syrian National Army and Salafist radical Islamist elements fighting against the Assad regime, hosted the political wings of the opposition, established zones of economic and administrative influence north of the border, accepted millions of Syrian refugees, and supported the new Damascus administration’s acquisition of international legitimacy both on the ground and at the table.
In the post Assad period, the discussion and agreement between Turkey and the new Syrian administration on issues such as defense cooperation, military training, the use of air bases and the restructuring of the new Syrian army show that Ankara’s objectives go beyond border security. In this way, Turkey will become not merely a neighbor protecting its borders, but one of the principal architects of Syria’s new security architecture.
Turkey’s broader objective is to expand its regional influence southward through a Damascus administration aligned with itself. This strategy is not based solely on interstate strategic interests. It is at the same time connected to Sunni Islamist political networks such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Erdoğan administration has supported for roughly 20 years.
Ankara’s relationship with movements close to the Muslim Brotherhood has been one of the striking elements of Turkey’s regional policy since the Arab uprisings. The partnership developed with Qatar, the support given to the Mohamed Morsi administration overthrown by a military coup in Egypt, the relations maintained with Hamas, and the ties established with certain Islamist elements of the Syrian opposition are part of the same geopolitical network.
For this reason, the order Ankara seeks in Syria is not merely “A border without the PKK.” Turkey prefers the formation of a new regional space in which Sunni political and social actors closer to itself are influential, in place of the “Shia” system of influence Iran built through Shia militias and ideological partnerships.
Whether this amounts to a centrally directed “Muslim Brotherhood led regional order” or a “Neo Ottoman Empire” is of course open to debate. When the actors Ankara has supported in the past, its political preferences and its regional partnerships are assessed together, it can be said that Turkey is not seeking an ideologically neutral state order in Syria.
From Ankara’s perspective, a strong, centralized, Sunni majority Syria in close relations with Turkey is, in addition to constraining the PKK/YPG, a strategic lever that could increase Turkey’s regional influence extending from Iraq to the Levant.
Why did Iran’s decline not bring Turkey and Israel closer together..?
At first glance, Iran’s weakening in Syria may be seen as a shared gain for both Turkey and Israel. Turkey viewed Iran’s influence in Syria, within the framework of the axis of resistance, as an obstacle in the path of its own regional influence. Israel, for its part, assessed the military infrastructure established in Syria by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and Iran backed militias as a direct security threat. The damage to Iran’s logistical lines and the overthrow of the Assad administration meant the decline of an actor neither country wanted.
Yet in geopolitics, the weakening of a rival does not automatically create agreement on the power that will take its place. Especially when the matter in question is the Middle East…
Although Iran’s decline is positive from Israel’s perspective, the emergence in Syria of a new military and political order directed by Turkey represents a new strategic uncertainty. Turkey’s establishment of military bases in Syria, its use of the airspace, its training of the new Syrian army, or its deployment of advanced weapons systems threaten the freedom of military movement Israel has enjoyed in the region for years.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s statement that Ankara does not want conflict with Israel in Syria, but finds Israel’s operations against Syrian territory unacceptable, also shows the scale of the strategic friction on the ground.
This, of course, does not mean that the two countries are preparing for direct war. But even the exchange of messages aimed at preventing conflict indicates that a real clash of interests has formed in Syria.
Israel significantly changed its security doctrine after the October 7 attacks. Instead of waiting for hostile elements to grow stronger on its borders and then trying to deter them, it opted for a strategy of preventing the emergence of these elements or their approach to its borders through the preemptive use of force.
This approach, based on the creation of buffer zones in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, means that Israel will regard with suspicion not only Iranian or Shia actors, but any military force with the potential to generate a threat in the future.
Turkey, for its part, sees Syria remaining fragmented, weak and continuously open to external intervention as risky for its own security. Ankara wants the central state to establish its authority across the whole country, Kurdish armed structures to cease being a separate center of power, and Israel’s interventions in the Golan Heights and southern Syria to come to an end.
Therefore, the fundamental divergence is extremely clear. Turkey wants a strong and largely Ankara aligned centralized Syrian state.
Israel, on the other hand, does not want the emergence of a militarily strengthened Syria with an uncertain ideological orientation that could restrict its freedom of movement in areas close to its own borders.
The possibility of a new “Sunni axis of resistance…”
Iran’s regional strategy was shaped for many years around the concept of the “Axis of resistance.” Tehran tried to establish a multi layered line of pressure against Israel through Shia militias in Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Palestinian armed groups.
Turkey’s apparent effort to establish the Sunni version of the same model creates a contradiction with respect to Ankara’s NATO membership and its relations with the West, particularly with the United States.
When the political networks Turkey supports, its relations with Hamas, its ties with Sunni armed and political actors in Syria, and its anti Israel rhetoric are assessed together, a new threat emerges from Israel’s perspective: in place of the Iran centered Shia axis, a looser Sunni belt of influence to which Turkey provides political protection and ideological legitimacy.
This belt does not have to emerge in the form of a formal military alliance. It may be a more flexible system operating through diplomatic support, media networks, civil society organizations, commercial relations, educational institutions, religious structures and political parties.
If Syria becomes the geographic center of this system, Turkey’s influence could extend from its own southern borders to areas close to Jordan and Israel.
From Israel’s perspective, the threat is not only Turkey’s possible military presence in Syria. The longer term risk is that Ankara’s political and ideological influence turns into a new social and state order in Syria carrying a harsher stance toward Israel.
Today’s Damascus administration may, for now, not wish to clash directly with Israel. The country needs to emerge from the destruction of the war, gain international legitimacy, escape sanctions and begin the reconstruction process.
However, states’ present weaknesses do not guarantee tomorrow’s strategic orientations. If Syria is rebuilt, its army grows stronger, and the administration turns toward a more nationalist or Islamist discourse in its search for internal legitimacy, relations with Israel could harden rapidly. Turkey’s influence over this administration will directly shape Israel’s threat perception regarding Ankara.
Where do the Kurds stand in the equation..?
The Kurdish question may be one of the most sensitive issues in the Turkey-Israel rivalry.
Turkey wants the independent military and political structure of the Syrian Democratic Forces to come to an end. Israel, historically, has established more positive relations with the Kurds in the region, and some Israeli politicians have made statements supporting Kurdish autonomy in terms of regional balance.
Washington’s partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces was also for years one of the most serious problems in Ankara-Washington relations.
If the integration process between the new Syrian administration and the Kurdish forces fails, Israel’s viewing of the Kurds or other minority groups as an element of balance against the Turkey backed central administration could increase the unease in Ankara.
Similarly, Israel’s discourse of protection toward the Druze and its interventions in southern Syria are read by Turkey as a strategy encouraging Syria’s fragmentation.
For this reason, the ethnic and sectarian minorities in Syria are not merely domestic political actors. They have turned into potential elements of balance in the struggle for influence between Turkey and Israel.
As things stand, the most important arena of geopolitical rivalry in the Middle East is now Syria. In this new equation, Syria is poised to become not only a state undergoing reconstruction, but also the epicenter of the regional power struggle between Israel and Turkey.
