Israel and China rarely view Middle East security through the same strategic lens. Their approaches to Iran, the United States, regional alliances and the international order often point in different directions.
Yet there is one regional actor that increasingly concerns both Jerusalem and Beijing.
Turkey.
The reasons are different. Israel is concerned about Turkey’s expanding regional influence, from its growing military and political role in Syria to its efforts to inject itself into the future of Gaza. Ankara increasingly appears determined to shape the regional order.
China is concerned about Turkey for a different reason: Ankara’s ability to shape the identity of a Uyghur and Turkistani community in northern Syria that remains ethnically connected to the population of western China.
Syria is where these concerns regarding Turkey’s influence unexpectedly intersect.
For years, Beijing’s Syria problem centered on Uyghur militants who left China, joined the Turkistan Islamic Party and entered the Syrian war. The principal fear was that battle-hardened fighters would eventually return to Xinjiang with military experience and organization.
More than a decade later, the challenge has expanded.
Many Uyghurs arrived in Syria with their families beginning around 2012. Children who arrived as toddlers are now teenagers or young adults. Others were born in Syria and have never seen China. Around Idlib and Jisr al-Shughur, Uyghur and Turkistani communities established schools, businesses and other community structures.
The population is therefore no longer simply a collection of foreign fighters. It includes families and a rising second generation whose identity has developed almost entirely outside Chinese state institutions.
Beijing’s question has expanded accordingly. It is no longer only whether veteran fighters will return to China. It is also who will shape the generation coming after them.
Chinese counterterrorism scholars are concerned about the transmission or reproduction of battle-hardened Uyghur force across generations. Researchers have examined how extremist organizations can absorb the children of militants and cultivate a new generation from childhood.
Fighters can theoretically be detained, disarmed, deported, integrated or managed through security arrangements. Children and young adults present a different problem. Some were born in Syria.
Others left China too young to retain a meaningful personal connection to it. Some may lack recognized nationality or formal identity documents. They may consider themselves Uyghur, Turkistani or Syrian without considering themselves Chinese.
From Beijing’s perspective, the more important question is the environment in which the second generation’s identity is being formed. That is where Turkey becomes central.
Northern Syria lies within an area of substantial Turkish military, political, economic, educational and cultural influence.
Turkey has deployed forces, supported armed groups and played a major role in shaping the political and security order that emerged in opposition-held territory. Importantly, Turkey’s connection to the Uyghurs reaches much deeper than its current Syria policy.
Turkish historical education traces the origins of the Turkish nation to Central Asia and includes Turkic populations living inside China within a wider Turkic historical geography. Earlier official educational materials described periods of “Chinese captivity,” celebrated Turkic resistance to Chinese rule and even presented the Great Wall as evidence that China feared the military power of the Turks.
Whether or not such historical interpretations are accepted outside Turkey, their significance lies in the worldview they create. Generations of Turkish students have encountered the Uyghurs not simply as a minority population inside China, but as part of a larger Turkic story extending from Anatolia through Central Asia and into territory governed today by Beijing.
That helps explain why China regards Turkey’s influence over Turkic populations differently from that of other countries.
Turkey is not merely a government that has criticized China’s policies in Xinjiang. It possesses a historical narrative, cultural vocabulary, educational system and network of political movements capable of placing the Uyghur question within a broader concept of Turkic identity.
That narrative has periodically surfaced in Turkish foreign policy. Following the 2009 Urumqi unrest, Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused China of committing a form of “genocide.” In 2019, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry described China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as “a great shame for humanity.”
As Ankara sought stronger economic and political relations with Beijing, its public language became more restrained. But softer rhetoric does not eliminate China’s deeper concern. Syria is where Turkey’s influence over the next generation becomes a Chinese security issue.
The children and young adults of Syria’s Uyghur community are growing up outside China’s schools, political institutions and national narrative of a unified Chinese Nation.
China’s concern is therefore not simply that this generation lives abroad. It is that its members remain ethnically, linguistically and historically connected to Uyghur communities inside China while their identities are being shaped beyond Beijing’s control – and potentially within a Turkish-centered understanding of the Turkic world.
Future security threats a concern
The concern is not merely the movement of people. It is the movement of identity and influence and the possibility that both could reinforce separatist sentiment and generate future security threats. Turkey’s influence can work gradually, by strengthening the idea that Syrian Uyghurs belong to a Turkic world extending beyond China’s borders.
China can pressure Damascus to act against armed organizations. It can demand assurances that Syrian territory will not be used to threaten Chinese interests. But Beijing has no recourse to address cultural and educational factors influencing veteran fighters’ wives and children.
Israel approaches Turkey from a different direction. It is concerned about Turkey’s expanding strategic position in Syria and the possibility that Ankara’s military and political influence will become entrenched close to Israel’s northern frontier.
A Turkish-backed security and political order could give Ankara greater influence over the military balance, infrastructure, armed organizations and external relationships of a neighboring state. Turkey could become a powerful and potentially hostile actor embedded in Israel’s immediate security environment.
But Israel’s concern is not limited to the northern arena.
Turkey has also sought a larger role in Gaza, positioning itself as a political actor in debates over ceasefires, reconstruction and the territory’s future governance.
Ankara’s close relationship with Hamas and its increasingly assertive regional posture have reinforced the Israeli perception that Erdogan is seeking to restore Turkey to a position of political leadership across the Middle East, seeking influence across multiple arenas central to Israel’s security. Syria is therefore part of a larger Israeli concern about Ankara’s regional trajectory.
This does not mean that China and Israel share a Syria strategy. They do not. Their broader approaches to the Middle East remain fundamentally different. But they are increasingly watching the same regional actor.
For Israel, Turkey’s expanding military and political influence in Syria could alter the strategic balance along its northern frontier. More broadly, Ankara’s ambitions from Syria to Gaza suggest that Turkey seeks to shape the future political order of the Middle East.
For China, Turkey’s influence presents a different challenge. It is focused on Ankara’s ability to shape the identity of a Syrian Uyghur generation that remains connected by ethnicity, language and history to western China. The concern is that identity formation, transnational connections and political networks could eventually reinforce separatist movements and produce new security threats.
For Israel, the issue is regional military balance. For China it’s about the long-term security implications of identity formation, transnational connections and the potential reinforcement of separatist movements.
Both stem from the same underlying development: Turkey’s expanding ability to project power and influence beyond its borders.
China is looking west from Xinjiang. Israel is looking north from the Golan. Increasingly, both lines of sight pass through Turkey.
The writer is the executive director of the SIGNAL Group.
