Israel’s strike on the Abu al-Duhur military airbase in northwestern Syria has pushed an increasingly difficult Israeli-Turkish relationship into one of its most sensitive arenas yet, raising the prospect that Syria could become not only a point of competition between the two regional powers, but also the place where their respective security red lines overlap.
The Israeli strike on August 18 targeted the airbase in Idlib province amid Israeli concerns that Turkey could expand its military presence there. Turkey and Syria have not publicly confirmed reports that Ankara was preparing the type of deployment described by Israel.
Israel warned against any expansion of Turkey’s military footprint in southern Syria following an airstrike on the Abu al-Duhur airbase, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying such a move would threaten Israeli security and alter the existing regional balance.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani rejected claims that Turkey intended to establish a military base at Abu al-Duhur, saying the site was being restored for use by the Syrian Air Force.
US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria and Iraq, Tom Barrack, publicly criticized the attack as an unnecessary escalation and said Washington is working on a deconfliction mechanism involving Israel, Turkey, and Syria.
Contradiction facing Syria’s future exposed
The episode has exposed a contradiction now shaping Syria’s postwar position. Turkey wants a stable and increasingly functional Syrian state closely tied to Ankara. Israel, meanwhile, wants to ensure that a stronger Syrian central government – and particularly deeper Turkish military involvement – does not restrict its freedom of action over Syrian airspace or create new security threats along its northern front.
For Syria, the immediate priority appears to be avoiding being turned once again into the battlefield where regional powers settle their disputes.
Al-Shaibani said on Aug. 23 that Damascus expects security negotiations with Israel to resume soon despite the latest escalation. Syria is seeking an end to Israeli strikes and an Israeli withdrawal from Syrian territory as part of a possible security arrangement, while maintaining its growing defense relationship with Turkey.
The diplomatic channel therefore remains open even as military friction increases.
Professor Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, described the situation as already constituting direct friction between Israel and Turkey, although he stressed that neither government appears to want that competition to develop into war.
“First of all, unfortunately, this is a direct friction or collision between Israel and Turkey. Both sides do not wish to have such direct friction between them, certainly not currently,” Michael told The Media Line.
From the Israeli perspective, Michael said, the central concern is not simply Turkish political influence in Damascus but the possibility of Turkish military infrastructure eventually restricting Israeli operations in Syrian airspace.
“Israel cannot accept Turkish military deployment in Syria because Israel must preserve full freedom of action, particularly aerial freedom of movement over Syria. We have not finished with Iran yet,” he said.
The Iranian dimension is central to Israel’s calculations. Syria has for years served as a corridor through which Israel has conducted operations against Iranian and Iran-linked targets, while Syrian airspace also forms part of the wider geographic route toward Iran.
Michael argued that this makes the potential installation of Turkish radar or air-defense capabilities particularly sensitive.
“Once the Turks are able to deploy in Syria, at airbases or elsewhere, they could establish air-defense missiles, radars or other systems that would complicate the situation for the Israeli Air Force,” Michael said.
“If, for example, Israel had to reach Iran and the Turks tried to intercept an Israeli jet, Israel would attack those batteries – the Turkish batteries. That would be a direct military clash between Israel and Turkey,” he added.
That remains a hypothetical scenario, and Ankara’s response to the Abu al-Duhur strike has so far remained relatively restrained.
Barın Kayaoglu, chair and assistant professor of American Studies at the Institute for Area Studies at the Social Sciences University of Ankara, said Turkey has given little indication that it wants to transform the current dispute into an open confrontation.
Turkey seems uninterested in escalation, shows restraint
“Regarding de-escalation, we’ll see. The Americans, particularly Ambassador Tom Barrack, have said they will work on it. Turkey is clearly not interested in escalating, as can be seen from its toned-down reaction. Whether that also interests Israel, we’ll see,” Kayaoglu told The Media Line.
That restraint is noteworthy because the Israeli-Turkish dispute is increasingly less about bilateral relations alone and more about the kind of Syrian state that will emerge from the country’s political transition.
For Ankara, a unified Syrian state offers the possibility of greater border stability, the consolidation of a friendly government in Damascus, and the expansion of Turkish political, economic, and security influence. For Israel, however, the strengthening of Damascus could gradually reduce the permissive military environment Israel has operated in since the fall of the Assad government.
Kayaoglu argued that this longer-term change is part of what is driving Israeli concern.
“Netanyahu is using Turkey and President Erdogan as an election tool,” he said. “In the long term, Israelis worry that Turkey will help Syria hold together and that Syria will cease to be a player they can easily bully or simply fly over on the way to Iran.”
The argument that electoral politics may be influencing Israeli rhetoric has also entered the diplomatic debate. Barrack has suggested that the timing and nature of the Abu al-Duhur strike could have been influenced by Israel’s approaching elections, although Israeli officials have rejected his characterization of the events and defended the strike as based on legitimate security concerns.
Michael, while taking a sharply different view of Turkey’s intentions, also criticized the way the Israeli government publicly handled the confrontation.
“I think Israel was wrong when it made this public and began with unnecessary declarations, mainly by the defense minister, fighting with the Turks through tweets and the media,” he said. “I think this is a problem.”
His wider assessment of Turkish policy, however, is considerably more skeptical than Kayaoglu’s.
Michael sees Ankara’s expanding role in Syria alongside its activities elsewhere in the region as part of a broader effort to increase Turkish regional power.
“They have hegemonic aspirations in the broader Middle East, and they see Israel as the main obstacle to the realization of those aspirations,” he said. “They want a weak Israel; they do not want a strong Israel.”
It is precisely this difference in perception that makes Syria dangerous.
From Ankara’s perspective, helping Damascus rebuild functioning state institutions and security capabilities is part of the effort to stabilize a neighboring country after years of fragmentation. From the Israeli security perspective presented by Michael, the same process risks creating a Turkish-supported military architecture directly to Israel’s northeast.
Damascus, meanwhile, is attempting to avoid choosing exclusively between the two sides.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa has previously said Syria is working toward a security agreement with Israel that could eventually open the way to something broader, while insisting such an arrangement would not mean abandoning Syrian claims to the Golan Heights.
Michael said those negotiations remain significant but argued that Turkey’s influence inevitably constrains Damascus’ room for maneuver.
“I think all of them, together with the Americans, are now working on a deconfliction mechanism,” he said. “This is an American interest, an Israeli interest, and mainly a Syrian interest, because all of them have an interest in bringing things down.”
But he added that deeper Turkish military, political, and economic involvement would make Syria increasingly dependent on Ankara.
Kayaoglu sees the equation differently. For him, the pressure on Damascus may eventually come not from Turkish involvement but from continued Israeli action inside Syrian territory.
“Syria’s preference will be to maintain domestic order,” he said. “But if Israel continues making a mockery of Syrian sovereignty, Damascus will be forced to join the Mecca Pact.”
That possibility introduces another layer into the regional competition.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7, establishing a framework under which an armed attack against one member is to be regarded as an attack against all three. The governments have described the agreement as defensive and have stressed that it is not directed against any particular country.
Michael questioned how far that collective-defense language would translate into actual military commitments. “The importance of this alliance, or this pact, is more symbolic than operational,” he said, pointing to existing regional security crises in which Turkey and Pakistan have not automatically intervened militarily on Saudi Arabia’s behalf.
“The idea of the alliance was supposed to be something similar to Article 5 of NATO: if one member is attacked, it is considered as though all members were attacked, and they come to defend the attacked member. This is not the situation today, and I doubt it will become the situation in the future,” Michael said.
Kayaoglu similarly cautioned against reading the agreement as a replacement for Turkey’s existing Western security commitments.
“Do not take seriously anyone who says Turkey will leave NATO for the Mecca pact,” he said. “It won’t happen unless NATO somehow ceases to exist.”
The more immediate significance of the pact may therefore be political rather than the creation of an alternative NATO-style military command. It gives Ankara, Riyadh and Islamabad an additional framework for coordinating defense policy at a moment when regional states are seeking greater strategic autonomy.
For Syria, joining such an arrangement remains hypothetical. But even the possibility illustrates how continued Israeli-Turkish friction could push Damascus further into emerging regional security structures, rather than leaving Syria as a neutral space between its neighbors.
For now, however, the clearest signals from all three capitals point toward containment rather than direct confrontation.
