Last week, Israeli aircraft struck the T4 airbase and Hama airport in Syria, along with two other military airbases. The operation, according to several Hebrew media reports, was intended to frustrate Turkish efforts to install air defenses and radar systems at the targeted sites. The Israeli attack forms part of a larger, looming confrontation between Ankara and Jerusalem.
Syria is currently the most active front in this contest. Other points of friction include Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and the eastern Mediterranean. But what are the driving forces behind the dispute, and why have recent months witnessed a sudden, sharp escalation in its intensity? Are Israel and Turkey set on an inevitable collision course?Turkey’s President Recep Tayepp Erdogan and the Islamist AKP have held power in Turkey since 2002. Erdogan’s presidency should be seen in historic terms. The Turkish leader is engaged in the transformation of Turkey, both internally and in its relations with its surroundings.
The recent arrest of Istanbul’s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu is the latest indication that Erdogan has no intention of ceding power through the electoral process. In recent years, step by step, Erdogan has gutted those power centers in Turkey that might have challenged him; the army, the courts, the media, all have been brought to heel. The political opposition, too, is now being neutralized by administrative means.
Regarding Turkey’s foreign relations, the strategy of Erdogan and his allies has been no less transformational. Ankara has embarked on a strategy of assertion, moving away from the pro-Western stance that characterized Turkish foreign policy in the years of the Cold War.
In place of this pro-US orientation, Turkey has currently embarked on a path that combines alliance with movements of political Islam, with a revanchist, neo-Ottoman outlook, in which Ankara seeks to assert influence unilaterally and then dominate points across a broad swathe of territory stretching from the Gulf to Iraq and the Levant, across the Mediterranean and to Libya.
In seeking to be the dominant power in the region, Turkey has established permanent military bases in Qatar, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, North Cyprus, and Libya. It has launched military operations against its Kurdish foes in Iraq and Syria in 2016, 2018, and 2019, leading to the de facto control of swathes of territory in both countries.
In the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey signed a treaty with Libya in 2019, laying claim to a vast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ); if accepted, it would give Ankara access to natural gas deposits. The agreement was not accepted by Greece, Cyprus, or Israel.
Ongoing friction has resulted as Turkey employs its naval vessels to harass ships exploring for natural gas resources in Greek or Cypriot waters. It is set to announce a similar EEZ with Syria.
In Libya, Ankara’s intervention using proxy forces and drones, as well as its own troops, led to the preservation of the Islamist dominated Government of National Accord in Tripoli.
In a number of the areas, Turkey’s employment of its state forces has gone hand in hand with partnerships with local Sunni movements and militias.
These are usually, though not always, Islamist in nature. (Specifically, in the Iraqi context, Turkey has worked with non-Islamist Sunni groups). In Libya, Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, Ankara has worked with local forces to build its power and influence.
Turkey's support for Hamas
TURKISH SUPPORT for Hamas in the Palestinian context forms part of this larger picture, as does the collapse in Israeli-Turkish relations, which is the direct result of Turkey’s transformation under Erdogan. After a brief apparent rapprochement in the pre-October 2023 period, relations are now at their lowest point. On May 5, 2024, Turkey announced an immediate suspension of all trade with Israel.
The Turkish leader has openly supported Hamas in its war against Israel. Taking part in a prayer service to mark the end of Ramadan on March 30, he said: “May Allah, for the sake of his name… destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.” Elsewhere, he has compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler and asserted that Israel intends to invade Turkey.
An active Hamas office remains in Istanbul. It was from here that the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers was planned, and which launched the 2014 Israel-Hamas war (Operation Protective Edge). Turkey facilitates Hamas activities across the region, and provides Hamas members with Turkish passports.
This pattern of an assertive, Islamist-supporting foreign policy is not new. Why the sudden escalation?
For a period, it looked like Iran had emerged as the main winner from the fragmentation and unrest that has swept the Arab world over the last two decades. Tehran’s proxies dominated Lebanon, Iraq, and much of Yemen.
The Iranians appeared to have successfully defended their client in Damascus. They were the main patrons of the Palestinian Islamist militias. And where the Iranians had not penetrated, the old Arab states system had asserted itself against the Sunni Islamist uprisings of the Arab Spring – most notably in Egypt and Tunisia.
The Turks and their Qatari allies, who had sought to ride the wave of Sunni Islamism, appeared to have lost their bet. But events since October 7, 2023, have dramatically altered this picture. The Iranian system of proxies has received a mauling at the hands of Israel.
In Lebanon and Iraq, Iran’s client militias have, for now at least, withdrawn from the fight. The damage suffered by these militias unexpectedly enabled a resurgence of the Turkish-backed Sunni Islamist forces in Syria, who succeeded finally in destroying the Assad regime.
The march of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham from the Turkish-protected Idlib province to Damascus brings for Israel the very real possibility that a new Islamist regime will be built under the tutelage of the hostile and aggressive Erdogan government. Such a regime will form a powerful new addition to Turkey’s expanding list of regional assets.
The placing of Turkey’s S-400 air defense systems in Syria would make Israel unable to respond to aggression, or to use Syrian airspace on the way to Iran. A new, powerful, centralized, Islamist Syria, with an army built by Turkey, would form a powerful instrument in the hands of a Turkish president who has made his politicidal intentions toward Israel very clear.
It is for this reason that Israel has evidently determined that no such new, jihadi regime can be permitted to come into existence. The pattern of Israeli activity in Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad reflects this decision.
This is all reflected in the creation of a buffer zone in Quneitra province; the advocacy that Russia should be permitted to retain its bases in the west, with the US remaining in the east; the support for the independent Druze military capacity in the south; and the determination to prevent the emergence of a powerful new, Turkish-supported Islamist military capacity.
Following the raids on T4 and Hama, Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister and former intelligence chief, indicated that Turkey does not seek confrontation with Israel in Syria.
Yet the interests and strategies of the two countries in Syria appear diametrically opposed, with Turkish-Israeli relations already poisoned because of the emergence of Islamist, Hamas-supporting governance in Ankara, and with Turkey pursuing aggressive and expansionist policies across the region. Further deterioration appears likely.