Israel’s decision to strike a Syrian airbase at Abu al-Duhur on August 18—after Syrian officials reported, and Türkiye later denied, that a Turkish military delegation had visited the facility—provided the latest evidence of a deepening rivalry between the two powers across a region in flux. Both Israel and Türkiye have expanded their footprints inside Syria since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, but their visions for the country—and the broader regional order—stand in stark contrast.
The rivalry is real but bounded: It is militarized most clearly in Syria, reinforced by disputes over Gaza and the Eastern Mediterranean, and still contained by deconfliction channels and a mutual interest in avoiding war. Yet the turbulence produced by the Iran war, new security alignments, and increasingly personalized rhetoric has made a limited confrontation more conceivable than before.
A Strike before the Threat Materialized
Abu al-Duhur matters less for the runway Israel damaged than for what the strike exposed. Israel justified its actions by claiming that Damascus was preparing to host Turkish forces at the site—including radar and air-defense systems—roughly 70 kilometers from the border. Netanyahu called the strike a warning, while Defense Minister Israel Katz accused Erdogan of “dangerous adventures.” Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Turkish officers had inspected rehabilitation work but denied any plan for a permanent deployment. Türkiye’s Defense Ministry subsequently denied that a Turkish delegation had visited the base at all. Israel has not publicly produced evidence of an imminent deployment.
In an interview, U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said Israel had raised the issue with Washington six days earlier, and that American intelligence agencies found neither Turkish assets in place nor an imminent deployment. “We all did our due diligence,” he said. “The answer we got is, no, that’s not happening. Mossad chief Roman Gofman had separately spent two hours with al-Shaibani days earlier and received the same denial. Israel struck anyway, without notifying Washington or Ankara. Barrack offered three possible explanations—faulty intelligence, institutional confusion between Israel’s diplomatic and military channels, or an attempt to “bait” Türkiye before Israel’s October 27 election—and warned that a Turkish interception could have widened the conflict. The exchange revealed two things at once: the domestic value to Israel’s government of presenting Türkiye as a threat, and a degree of public friction with Washington that Israeli officials rarely allow into the open.
The runway dispute sits inside a larger contest over regional order. Ankara fears that unchecked Israeli military freedom could frustrate Syrian consolidation and reactivate Türkiye’s Kurdish vulnerability, both of which it is trying to prevent. Israel fears that Turkish military access, political influence, and new regional alignments will narrow its own operational freedom and flexibility. At least three connected fronts now carry that competition: the military map in Syria, the Kurdish peace process, and the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement signed on August 7.
Competing Military Footprints in Syria
The Turkish government is seeking an integrated Syrian state closely tied to Ankara, and it supports Ahmad al-Sharaa’s transitional administration through training, logistics, reconstruction, and institutional cooperation. Israel increasingly treats this as part of a wider Turkish military network, rather than a dispute confined to one possible base.
Inside Syria, Turkish forces remain concentrated in the northern zones created by earlier operations and around the city of Idlib. What has actually changed since Assad’s fall in 2024 is Ankara’s formal relationship with Damascus. An August 2025 accord covers training and military assistance, and Syrian personnel use Turkish facilities and academies. Abu al-Duhur raised the prospect for Israel of a permanent Turkish role farther south. That Israel had already struck airbases in Hama and Homs after Turkish teams surveyed them shows that this concern predates August—and Israel is targeting a trajectory rather than any deployment that exists.
Israel’s aim’s in Syria run in stark contrast to its Turkish counterpart: to preserve its freedom of action in a neighboring state, including along a key strike corridor to Iran, by keeping the Syrian state too weak to contest it. Since Assad’s fall, Israeli forces have crossed the 1974 disengagement line, seized territory well beyond it, and destroyed much of what remained of Syrian military infrastructure.
Nonetheless, Israel’s military tactics can deny its adversaries specific assets but cannot produce a political settlement that advances strategic interests. Damascus has therefore held out hope for negotiations, even if it is skeptical of their outcome. On August 23, U.S.-mediated Israeli-Syrian talks resumed in Jordan with an explicit objective of preventing Israeli-Turkish competition from being fought on Syrian territory. Damascus demanded an Israeli withdrawal to its pre-December 2024 positions, restoration of the 1974 disengagement framework, and freedom to rebuild its institutions and alliances.
The Kurdish Peace Process and Israel
There is also concern across Turkish political camps that the country’s unsettled Kurdish file could provide leverage for external interference. Indeed, according to some analysts, the ongoing peace process is at least partially driven by “the Israel factor,” as Ankara is keen to prevent its rival from exploiting Kurdish nationalism for its own ends as political authority is reordered across Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
In August, the Turkish parliament passed a reintegration law that moved the PKK process onto a harder-to-reverse institutional track, while the dissolution of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria announced on August 28 advanced the integration process there. Together, the two developments reduce the space that Ankara fears Israel could exploit.
Erdogan’s description of regional Kurds as “our brothers” signals the ambition behind this: to recast Kurdish actors as stakeholders in an Ankara-centered regional order, rather than as a security problem managed at arm’s length.
The Mecca Agreement
The August 7 Mecca Joint Defense Agreement among Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan adds another layer of strategic insulation, with planned political and military coordination mechanisms giving it more substance than a symbolic declaration. Its significance is also political: After the Iran war deepened doubts about American security guarantees, three regional powers chose to organize deterrence together. The pact is not formally directed at Israel, yet it emerged amid shared concerns about increasingly assertive Israeli and Iranian military postures. It embodies a search for predictable regional security at a moment when Israel is widely seen as producing instability through its desire to reshape the region in its interests. Its relevance to the bounded strategic rivalry between Türkiye and Israel lies in its potential to give Türkiye additional partners, interoperability, and political weight when bargaining over Syria and the wider regional order.
Some Turkish commentators have read Abu al-Duhur as an early Israeli response to the pact. Interconnectedly, Syrian Foreign Minister al-Shaibani called Türkiye a key reconstruction partner and said Syria was considering whether to join the pact. The strike therefore tested not only Turkish military access, but also how far that emerging alignment could extend into Syria.
Why Rivalry Is More Likely than War
These measures are designed to strengthen Türkiye within a contested order, not to prepare for war with Israel. Neither government appears to want direct conflict, and Israel’s foreign minister insists it has “no interest in escalation.” Both countries retain a covert channel on Syria. Red lines are enforced in public while communication manages their consequences in private.
Washington and its Western partners have reasons to contain the rivalry because, as The Economist has argued, geography and energy (and NATO politics) still pull the two states together. Yet Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and the genocide allegations it faces, have devastated its image inside Türkiye and made renewed cooperation difficult to sell to the public. This strengthens Ankara diplomatically but narrows the space for rapprochement.
A May 2026 National Intelligence Academy report shows how deeply Israel informs Ankara’s planning. It anticipates increasing competition in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean, but recommends both deterrence and continued dialogue. The Mecca Agreement broadens Türkiye’s coalition; cooperation with Damascus shapes Syria; and deconfliction mechanisms with Israel keep either track from producing an unintended clash.
Although a direct Türkiye-Israel war remains unlikely, there are still risks of confrontation. Syria is the most dangerous theater because Israeli operational reach and Turkish political and geographic weight now overlap there directly.
Abu al-Duhur made the governing pattern visible. Israel can still disrupt capabilities before they mature, but each preventive strike reinforces Ankara’s argument that the region needs sovereignty, integration, and collective restraint. Türkiye won the public round because it did not take the bait and respond militarily. Ankara’s emphasis on Syrian sovereignty attracted broader diplomatic support than Israel’s unsubstantiated public claim of an imminent deployment, but Israel still enforced its immediate operational red line. What is really being decided in Syria is not who controls a runway but which doctrine organizes the region that comes after Assad—Ankara’s bet on integration, or Israel’s bet on unilateral force—and neither side has yet given the other a reason to fold.
