Turkey sees a stable and revitalized Syria as a strategic buffer. Israel has other ideas.

For nearly 14 years, the Syrian people endured a devastating civil war before freeing their country from Bashar al-Assad’s rule in December 2024. This new chapter offers a window of hope, despite serious internal and external concerns about Syria’s post-war future. Syria’s transition is threatened, however, by an unfolding Israel-Turkey cold war, with Israeli efforts to keep Syria weak placing the country at the core of their rivalry.

Rather than allow Syria’s transition to unfold, Israel has sought to prevent the emergence of a strong and unified Syrian state. Days after Assad’s fall, Israel invaded areas beyond the 1974 disengagement line stemming from the Yom Kippur War. It has since occupied significant swathes of Syrian territory and decimated Syria’s remaining military capabilities. Israel has conducted regular incursions into Syrian villages, including one not far from the capital of Damascus. Israeli troops have killed and detained Syrian citizens. It also backs separatist militias in the Druze-majority Sweida in southern Syria.

The new Syria has faced many challenges, including sectarian violence involving the government in Syria’s coastal region and Sweida, and the failure of the government to hold perpetrators among its fighters accountable. Yet Israel’s operations are further intensifying these challenges. On August 18, Israel launched eight airstrikes on Abu al-Duhur, Syria’s second-largest military airport near northern Syria’s Aleppo. While Israeli strikes on Syrian Iran-backed groups became routine well before the civil war’s end, this attack stood out because the base sits roughly 43 miles from the Turkish border. 

Israel confirmed the attack the following day, claiming Syria planned to violate supposed security understandings by allowing Turkish troops to deploy to the base. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Turkish officers visited the base for training, defending Syria’s sovereign right to establish military cooperation with any country.

That explanation is not unreasonable. Turkish bases exist across northern Syria and helped back the Syrian opposition in the war. Those efforts kept the central Syrian state weak during Assad’s rule—a clear benefit for Israel. Now, however, those bases bolster a new Syrian state, which Israel deems unacceptable.  

That power dynamic and the logic behind the August 18 strikes both drive and underscore a fundamental clash over Syria’s future. Turkey wants to rebuild Syria, strengthening its state institutions and military. Israel, by contrast, aims to prevent Syria from re-emerging as a functional state with a capable military on its border. The Abu al-Duhur strike further highlights that Israel will use military force to limit Turkey’s influence and Syria’s revitalization, sending a clear warning to both.

For Israel, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his transitional government represent a security threat, especially within Israel’s post-October 7, 2023, mindset and amid upcoming elections that value hardline stances in an increasingly ultranationalist Israeli populace. Israeli officials view al-Sharaa and his former connections to Al Qaeda and to militias with extremist ideologies from the former Syrian opposition as Islamists hell-bent on their destruction, even as Syrian officials reiterate their disinterest in any clash with Israel. As such, Israel has moved to create facts on the ground that maximize its leverage over their northern neighbor.

Meanwhile, Syria’s reconstruction and security are central to Turkey’s national security interests. Ankara has long supported the actors now governing Damascus and has expanded its role in rebuilding Syria. It began training the Syrian military in October 2025 and, this spring, the latter participated in Turkey’s Efes military exercise for the first time.

Those efforts have fostered dangerous incidents in Syria. In 2025, Azerbaijan brokered a military deconfliction channel between Turkey and Israel following Israeli strikes on the T4, Palmyra, and Hama military sites, blocking Ankara from deploying to them. The creation of this channel underscored how close the two countries were to clashing. 

That channel appears to be failing. Two days after the al-Duhur strike, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz directed a harsh statement at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, warning that Israel would prevent any entity from threatening its security. Turkey’s Defense Ministry called on Israel to stop its “reckless attacks.”

This competition’s regional implications clarify each capital’s security thinking. Israel has illegally occupied the Syrian Golan Heights for decades, annexing it in 1981, and benefits from occupying Syrian land in ways that delegitimize the state and place its forces in strategic military positions. By expanding this buffer zone and limiting Turkish deployments, it prevents Ankara from bolstering similar buffer zones in Syria in any potential future conflict.

Yet it is Syria’s skies that Israel desires today. A stronger, Turkish-backed Syrian military, particularly with advanced radar, could limit Israel’s ability to target Iran or another regional rival through Syrian airspace. Ankara’s move, then, is meant to enhance Syria’s capacity to police its skies, limit Israeli airspace violations, and restrict Israel’s ability to carry on its regional wars of choice and any other aggression. This effort constitutes a key security interest for Ankara, especially as it considers Syria part of its security sphere.

Still, a direct Turkey-Israel war remains unlikely at present due to Ankara’s strong role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Tel Aviv’s darling status in the West. The more likely scenario is an expanding cold war, with Syria comprising its main battlefield. The result is a Syria stuck between two regional powers desiring to increase their relative power, with potentially disastrous results.

This logic explains why Israel occupied Syrian territory in December 2024. The goal is to force Syria to capitulate to Israel’s demands on issues like the Golan or its airspace. If Syria does not play along, it remains weak, facilitating Israel’s indefinite occupation and free use of its airspace. 

This strategy, however, is time-limited. Turkey will not allow Israel to dictate Syria’s security environment and is more likely to challenge Israeli red lines over time, just as it likely did at Abu al-Duhur. Turkey has proven itself willing to test red lines in Syria repeatedly since the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011. Nothing suggests Erdogan will shift course now.

Syria may be this cold war’s main battlefield, but it is not the only one. Turkey and Israel are competing across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa, with Israel deepening security partnerships with Greece and Cyprus as Turkey strengthens ties with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan through the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement. In Somalia, Turkey has invested heavily in the country’s military and maritime security, while Israel’s recognition of Somaliland has challenged Ankara’s support for Somalia’s territorial integrity. 

The two countries do not yet lead formal opposing blocs, but they are building competing security networks that typically underpin them. Israel partners with Greece, Cyprus, and the UAE, whereas Turkey strengthens ties to Syria, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. As these networks deepen, the conditions that would make Syria the most dangerous front in a wider Turkey-Israel cold war deepen at Syria’s expense.

Assad’s fall offered a fragile opportunity to rebuild Syria. Israel is undermining that process by turning Syria into a battleground for its conflicting interests with Turkey. Ankara, by contrast, sees a functioning Syrian state as a security asset. The longer this competition continues, the harder it will be for Damascus to establish the capacity required to secure its future. Syrians deserve a chance to rebuild their country in peace, but Israel’s military intervention is denying them that opportunity.

About the Authors: Alexander Langlois and Yara Bataineh

Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst, the senior editor at DAWN, and a contributing fellow at Defense Priorities. He is focused on the geopolitics of the Levant and the broader dynamics of West Asia. Langlois holds an MA in International Affairs from American University. He has written for various outlets, including The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Sada, the Atlantic Council’s MENASource, the Lowy Institute, the Gulf International Forum, The New Arab, The Nation, and Inkstick. Follow him on X: @langloisajl.

Yara Bataineh is a Jordanian writer, based in Washington, DC. Her professional experience includes coordinating refugee-focused projects and developing civic education programs for youth within political parties in Jordan. She also previously worked as an editorial associate at DAWN’s Democracy in Exile. She holds a master’s in International Relations from the University of San Diego, where she wrote her thesis on political resilience and democratic development in the region, focusing on Jordan, and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Jordan.

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