Syriasly? Turkey, Israel, and the Shadow War Brewing in Syria
📡 Fifteen years after Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza, relations between (increasingly antagonistic) Turkey and Israel are once again spiraling—only this time, the flashpoint isn’t the sea, it’s Syria. What began as a diplomatic rupture is now veering into military brinkmanship
After more than a decade of civil war, you’d think Syria had run out of room, and patience, for more conflict. Since 2011, foreign powers have treated Syria like the Middle East’s chessboard. Not long ago, these two were on relatively polite terms—even military allies in the late 20th century. But Syria’s collapse has these two locking eyes across the ruins.
⏳ To understand the current standoff, it helps to rewind.
Turkey’s stake: Early in the war, Ankara urged Bashar al-Assad to reform. When that failed, it backed the rebels—some secular, some decidedly not. Turkey opened its borders to opposition fighters (and ‘inadvertently’ to jihadists), hoping to see a friendly post-Assad neighbor. When that didn’t materialize, Turkey sent in the tanks.
Israel’s stake: Israel preferred the devil it knew (Assad) to an ISIS caliphate next door. It kept its distance early on, intervening only to target Hezbollah-bound weapons convoys. But the fall of Assad has forced a shift. With a Turkish-backed Islamist government now in Damascus, Israel is now brazenly intervening out in the open.
Now, both powers are claiming to ‘protect’ Syria—while doing everything they can to undermine its sovereignty. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
💬 From Suleiman Shah to T4: Two Flags, One Stage
🚩 Let’s start with the pretexts.
Turkey’s direct involvement in Syria began in 2015, under the noble-sounding mission of protecting the tomb of Suleiman Shah, grandfather of the Ottoman Empire’s founder. When ISIS threatened the site, Turkey didn’t send a diplomatic note—it just rolled in the tanks. The tomb was relocated closer to the Turkish border, and with that symbolic operation came a new phase of Turkish boots on Syrian soil.
Since then, Turkey has launched multiple operations under different banners: against ISIS, against Kurdish militias, in the name of stability etc. Safe zones were created, schools rebranded, Turkish lira introduced. Critics say Erdoğan is turning northern Syria into a vassal state. He’d never admit to neo-Ottoman ambitions, but the map is starting to look suspiciously familiar.
Lately, Ankara has looked further south.
For weeks, Turkish officers had been touring Syrian airbases, including the T4 air base near Palmyra, preparing to install air-defense systems and drones. This wasn’t humanitarian assistance. This was forward positioning.
Then, on April 2nd, Israel struck—bombing the T4’s runway and radar. Two more bases were hit the same night. The message was clear: this far, no further.
💥 Kurds, Chaos, and Strategic Paranoia
The Kurdish question remains the biggest wedge between Israel and Turkey.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), formerly America’s key ally against ISIS, are now aligned with the new Turkish-backed interim government in Damascus. For Israel, they are ‘natural allies’—a secular minority and disciplined counterweight to Islamist militias. For Turkey, they’re just the PKK in a new uniform.
Israel’s warm words about the Kurds rattled Ankara so badly that Turkey quietly reopened negotiations with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, still imprisoned. By March, the PKK announced a surprise ceasefire—a move widely seen less as peace but more as Turkey’s attempt to preempt any Israeli-Kurdish alliance in Syria’s northeast.
Each side sees the other’s proxies as an existential threat. And they’re acting accordingly. Which brings us to:
🥷🏻 One Man’s Terrorist…
At the heart of the Turkey-Israel feud is the question of who counts as a terrorist.
For Turkey, Israel’s flirtation with Kurdish groups is a provocation. The SDF may have fought ISIS, but Ankara views them as PKK-adjacent—and the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state for decades. Israeli support, even rhetorical, is interpreted in Turkey as foreign meddling in Turkey’s domestic security.
For Israel, Turkey’s hands are hardly clean. Erdoğan hosts Hamas leaders in Istanbul like visiting dignitaries. His government supported rebel factions in Syria—including some with links to al-Qaeda. In Tel Aviv’s eyes, Turkey has played both arsonist and firefighter in Syria: backing Islamist groups while claiming to fight terrorism.
But Israel's own record deserves equal scrutiny if not outright condemnation. It calls out Turkish support for Hamas, while quietly forging tactical relationships with groups that advance its own territorial goals. Whether it’s the Druze, certain Kurdish factions, or anti-Iran elements, Israel plays the proxy game just as hypocriticaly and ruthlessly—only with better press coverage.
And let’s not forget the double standard:
When Turkey claims to be protecting ‘Turkish interests’ it’s accused of neo-imperialism. But…
When Israel claims it’s acting ‘for security’, the international community nods solemnly and moves on. Same game. Different narrative.
🇮🇱 Israel’s Druze Doctrine: Benevolence Or Else
While Turkey consolidates in the north, Israel is expanding in the south, near the Golan Heights. The stated purpose? Protecting the Druze minority from reprisals.
But in practice, Israel’s presence has looked less like peacekeeping and more like land-grabbing masquerading as punitive strikes. Dozens of airstrikes have hit Syrian positions linked to the interim government. In one incident, Israeli tanks fired on a Druze village after receiving what it claimed were ‘warning shots’. Locals say they were defending their homes from an uninvited foreign army.
The logic is simple: Israel sees a Turkey-aligned Syria as a threat. With Assad gone and a potentially Islamist regime in Damascus, Tel Aviv is racing to establish facts on the ground. It calls it a humanitarian mission. Syrians call it something else.
Israel's military doctrine has always relied on overwhelming force and ambiguous legality. But in Syria, it's crossing into strategic adventurism—bombing infrastructure, shaping governments, and justifying it all under the banner of “self-defense.”
The irony? That’s the same playbook it condemns Iran for using.
🇺🇸 The Trump–Netanyahu–Erdoğan Triangle
All of this tension spilled into Washington this week, in a photo-op that felt more like an episode of The Apprentice: Geopolitics Edition.
In a surreal White House reunion, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu traded praise, grumbled about Iran, and, unusually, spent a notable part of their meeting discussing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. That Erdoğan was even on the agenda was no coincidence. It shows that Turkey’s rising presence in Syria isn’t just an Israeli concern—it’s a strategic headache for Washington, too.
Trump’s advice to Bibi? “You need to be reasonable.” (A tall order for a man wanted by the ICC).
This from the man who once described Erdoğan as “very strong.” The downgrade says a lot.
Washington doesn’t want to referee a fight between two ‘friends’, especially not two NATO affiliated friends, and especially not with Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah watching from the sidelines
In response to recent tensions, both countries have agreed to setup a ‘deconfliction line’. It’s not peace, or containment, but just crisis management 101 in a move that feels the children were being scolded by America after having set the backyard on fire.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stated on April 4th, that Turkey does not seek confrontation with Israel in Syria. He emphasized, "We don't want to see any confrontation with Israel in Syria because Syria belongs to Syrians."
A noble sentiment… carefully worded for deniability. 😉
🔋 Erdoğan’s Energy Hypocrisy
And then there’s the gas.
President Erdoğan brands himself as the defender of Palestine, the loudest anti-Zionist voice in the Muslim world:
Turkish media slams Israeli aggression.
Turkish drones patrol Syrian skies.
Turkish ministers meet with Hamas.
But while Erdoğan condemns Israel with one hand, he helps power it with the other.
🇦🇿 Azerbaijani (a staunch ally of both countries) gas flows through Turkey into Europe via the TANAP pipeline. Some of that gas is quietly redirected to Israel—no speeches, no hashtags, no protests. I say ‘some of that gas’, but what I really mean is 41% of Israel’s gas transits through Turkey. 41%!
Shipments of oil and gas from Azerbaijan to Israel are delivered via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline directly to the port of Ashkelon in Israel. Similarly, Azerbaijan uses Turkish airspace to reach Israel’s Ovda airport, which is generally used for weapons and logistics.
In other words, while Erdoğan denounces Israeli strikes on Gaza, his pipelines are keeping Tel Aviv’s lights on. Why? Because energy transit fees don’t have an ideology. They just pay.
🇬🇷 Meanwhile, Greece, Turkey’s nemesis and long seen as Europe’s economic patient, is becoming Israel’s energy wingman in the Eastern Mediterranean. Through projects like the Great Sea Interconnector, Athens is linking its electricity grid with Israel and Cyprus, laying the groundwork for a regional energy alliance that conveniently skips over Turkish territory.
This isn’t just an infrastructure project—it’s a geopolitical message wrapped in copper and concrete. Add to that the long-simmering EastMed pipeline discussions, and it’s clear that Greece, once a peripheral player, is now actively shaping the region’s energy future alongside Israel. While Erdoğan talks about energy hub ambitions, Athens is building a parallel track—one that turns Turkey’s bypass into policy, not theory.
Behind the tankers and transmission cables lies a deeper fault line: Israel and its allies on one side, Turkey and its sphere on the other, each carving out influence through ports, pipelines, and proxy deals. And stuck between them, as always, is Syria—the unwilling corridor for everyone else’s ambitions. Which brings us to…
⚔️ The Wider Middle East Free-for-All
This Turkey–Israel showdown is just one subplot in the region’s bigger drama:
🇮🇷 Iran lost its Assad-era foothold in Syria and is now watching both Israel and Turkey muscle in. Expect Tehran to quietly arm any militia that can make things messier for either.
🇪🇬 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia & Egypt distrust Turkey’s Islamist ambitions, but they’re not thrilled about Israel either. They officially condemn Israeli incursions, but unofficially they’re happy to see Ankara checked.
🇶🇦 Qatar, Turkey’s closest Arab ally, still dreams of reviving a Qatar–Turkey gas pipeline via Syria—once blocked by Assad. With a compliant regime now in Damascus, that idea is back on the table. But Israeli airstrikes in southern Syria could derail the project before it even begins.
🇺🇸 The U.S. has around 900 troops still in Syria, guarding oil fields and managing fragile Kurdish alliances. It doesn’t want a shooting war between its NATO ally (Turkey) and its closest regional partner (Israel). But as tensions escalate, it may not get a choice. Even Trump, in his meeting with Netanyahu, half-joked: “If you ever have an issue with Turkey, I can help... but you need to be reasonable.” That might age well.
♟️ Syria, Forever the Pawn
🇹🇷 It’s worth remembering: both modern Turkey and modern Israel are, in a way, children of the Ottoman Empire’s dismemberment. One inherited the imperial throne, the other emerged from the imperial vacuum. Syria was carved apart by colonial pencils, the Balfour Declaration was signed while Ottoman troops were still retreating, and a century later, the region’s power players are still tracing over the same fault lines
Syria’s civil war may be over, but its sovereignty is still fragmented. The country is now sliced into de facto zones: Turkey in the north and east, Israel in the south and west, America scattered somewhere in between. Foreign powers are back, claiming to protect, and taking whatever they can.
Neither Ankara nor Jerusalem is backing down. For Erdoğan, Syria is a legacy project. For Netanyahu, it’s a buffer zone. Both leaders are pursuing regional dominance, and both believe they have history—and firepower—on their side.
⚠️ The danger is that miscalculation becomes escalation. A drone here, a patrol there, and suddenly you’ve got two heavily armed, nationalist governments in a shooting war.
The interim government in Damascus, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, is already being dismissed by Israel as a jihadist puppet (as Israel always does). Turkey sees him as a legitimate partner. Israel wants to weaken Syria, potentially seeking federalism (read: cantonization); Turkey wants a strong presidency and a (compliant) ally next door. Both are using drones and diplomacy to shape Syria’s future.
Neither is asking Syrians what they want.
Ordinary Syrians can only watch—weary, cynical, and increasingly voiceless—as foreign flags are raised over their cities once again.
The names change. The missions change. But the war, somehow, never ends.
✍️ Also Worth Noting
Israeli military team had to bypass Turkey to land in Baku, Azerbaijan to hold first ever ‘deconfliction line’ meeting
