Portents of an Israeli-Turkish Clash in Syria

The war has not yet ceased in our south, and already it threatens to break out among our neighbors. In other words, we live on borrowed time, lurching from one conflict to the next.

And for good reason! The bombing of a Syrian base very nearly escalated into an all-out clash between Ankara and Tel Aviv. That was on August 18, and Benjamin Netanyahu didn't mince his words: his country would not tolerate a Turkish military foothold that could spread into southern Syria.

The warning was all the more forceful given that eight strikes had targeted the Abu al-Dhuhur air base, just 70 kilometers from the Turkish border.

It's worth recalling, too, that since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Erdogan has become the chief mentor of the new Syria under Ahmed al-Sharaa, helping rebuild its armed forces and turning it into a strategic partner.

This is no longer Hafez al-Assad's Syria

Was it this renewed tension between Ankara and Tel Aviv that prompted a meeting between Syria's top diplomat, Assaad Chaibani, and Mossad chief Roman Gofman, in Jordan on August 23?

Yet this quiet parley did not spark outrage across the Arab world the way Anwar al-Sadat's surprise visit to Israel did in 1977. A taboo was officially broken—and indeed, who would have imagined such talks taking place under the Baathist regime?

Israel might have been expected to welcome this, but contrary to expectations, it halted neither its airstrikes nor its territorial incursions, as seen on August 27 in Quneitra.

The fact is, things have changed. Under Hafez al-Assad, Syria was a regional power that, while not exactly formidable, was feared by its immediate neighbors, Arab or otherwise. No one wanted to pick a fight with it, which allowed it to pursue, within certain limits, an assertive foreign policy that often bordered on provocation.

As a result, thanks to the autonomy it exercised and the room to maneuver it granted itself, Syria had become, at least geographically, a buffer zone between an "Erdoganist" Turkey flaunting its unabashed brand of Islam on one side, and Israel, a state Jewish to its core, on the other.

But now, in a country worn down by Baathist mismanagement and ravaged by years of civil war, Turkey has begun staking its claims—and will inevitably find itself face to face with an Israel that occupies part of Syrian territory.

What can we expect?

Given the outsized egos of both Netanyahu and Erdogan, and assuming both leaders remain in power, we should brace for an epic showdown across Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, or even other territories. This will be a fight of feints and dodges, of underhanded tactics as well as head-on attacks, close combat, and rising tensions right up to the breaking point.

And this despite a September 2025 report from the Congressional Research Service concluding that direct confrontation between Turkey and Israel remains unlikely, precisely because both states are well aware of the cost such a war would entail.

Still, in the realm of conflict studies, leaders and other elites don't always act rationally! All the more so since, in the eyes of Israeli observers, the slogan now popular in Anatolia—"Make Turkey great again"—hardly reassures the Zionist state. Washington will find it increasingly difficult to contain or keep apart two adversaries already gearing up for battle.

Turkey, the new Iran?

Yes, that's one hypothesis, but only in a face-off with Israel, since Syria has overnight become a zone where 'two security perimeters overlap' — the Turkish and the Israeli, the Muslim and the Jewish. And it can't be ruled out that Shiite militancy, that mobilizer of "proxies," might end up allying itself, even if only temporarily, with a 'Muslim Brotherhood version' of political Islam championed by Ankara!

So we would have, against all odds, a Hezbollah backed by its former enemy, Ahmad al-Sharaa, an Islamist who emerged from Jabhat al-Nusra and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham! Against a common adversary, a reversal of alliances is always legitimate and opportune. But this would only be a tactical alliance, dictated by the exigencies of the moment, one that couldn't presume anything about the future.

With Arab nationalism now out of the picture, Turkey won't settle for economically capturing the Syrian market of 25 million consumers: it will want to wield political influence in Damascus, and to that end will deploy its military and security apparatus.

Since the shaky power of the Syrian president can't fulfill certain sovereign functions or oversee the various branches of the state, it will inevitably turn to the expertise of its northern neighbor. Does this mean Turkey will get sucked into the spiral of 'announced belligerence'? Everything points that way, and we can already see the early signs of a spiral reminiscent of the US involvement in Vietnam under Lyndon Johnson.

Indeed, if the Syrian state intends to rebuild itself, it will first need an army capable of quelling the centrifugal tendencies of the Alawites, the Druze, and other factions calling for the country's breakup.

And it's up to Ankara to provide that and to bolster the central authority based in Damascus. But Israel, which has gotten into bad habits in Syria and intends to keep its freedom of aerial action there, cannot tolerate an army built along NATO lines that could serve as a proxy for a neo-Ottoman venture.

And Lebanon, from primary stage to secondary stage?

A new stage is now set for a new script that will define new rules of the game!

What will become of Hezbollah, caught in a trap? Well, in that scenario, it could benefit, even if only partly, from Damascus's logistical support — support it has sorely lacked since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. And perhaps, through a shift in the tectonic plates, Lebanon would move from being the initial stage to being merely a secondary stage of a regional conflict.

But frankly, that would do us a lot of good!