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Istanbul, Turkiye – Simply hours after Israel launched strikes final week towards Qatar – a United States-designated “main non-NATO ally” and considered one of Washington’s closest Gulf companions – pro-Israel commentators rapidly shifted their consideration to Turkiye.
In Washington, Michael Rubin, a senior fellow on the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, prompt that Turkiye might be Israel’s subsequent goal and warned that it mustn’t depend on its NATO membership for defense.
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On social media, Israeli tutorial and political determine Meir Masri posted, “At this time Qatar, tomorrow Turkey.” Ankara responded sharply. In unusually harsh language, a senior adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote: “To the canine of Zionist Israel … quickly the world will discover peace along with your erasure from the map.”
For months, pro-Israel media shops have steadily escalated their rhetoric towards Turkiye, portraying it as “Israel’s most harmful enemy”.
Israeli commentators have additionally framed Turkiye’s presence within the japanese Mediterranean as a “menace” and its function in rebuilding post-war Syria as a “new rising hazard”.
With Israel’s regional aggression escalating and its conflict on Gaza exhibiting no signal of ending, Turkish International Minister Hakan Fidan retaliated in August by suspending financial and commerce ties with Israel.
“In Ankara, this [anti-Turkish] rhetoric is taken critically, with Israel seen as looking for regional hegemony,” Omer Ozkizilcik, non-resident fellow on the Atlantic Council, advised Al Jazeera.
“Turkiye more and more feels that Israeli aggression has no limits and enjoys American help,” added Ozkizilcik.
The strikes on Qatar additionally probably underscored Ankara’s doubts about US safety ensures as a NATO ally. Regardless of Doha’s particular ally standing with Washington, Israel confronted no seen pushback from the US, resulting in questions over whether or not the US would actually see any assault on Turkiye as an assault on itself, because the NATO constitution dictates.
In contrast to many Arab states, nonetheless, “Turkiye has way back understood that it can not depend on the US or NATO for its personal nationwide safety pursuits,” mentioned Ozkizilcik.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself now more and more boasts of his nation’s regional expansionist goals. In August, when requested whether or not he believed within the concept of a “Higher Israel”, he replied: “Completely.”
For Ankara, such rhetoric is not only symbolic – it indicators an Israeli imaginative and prescient of dominance that stretches throughout the Center East, probably clashing head-on with Turkiye’s personal regional outlook.
On Sunday, Fidan advised Al Jazeera that Israel’s “Higher Israel” imaginative and prescient – which some non secular Zionists consider extends into modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan – goals to “maintain the nations within the area weak, ineffective, and particularly to go away Israel’s neighbouring states divided”.
Over the previous couple of weeks alone, Israel – along with persevering with its genocidal onslaught in Gaza and nearly-daily raids within the occupied West Financial institution – additionally attacked Yemen and Syria, and is accused of hitting the Gaza aid flotilla in Tunisia.
In opposition to this backdrop, Turkiye and Israel are already in a “geopolitical rivalry”, famous Ozkizilcik, including that Israel’s actions clashed with what the analyst views because the “Turkish agenda to have sturdy [centralised] states” quite than decentralised states the place a number of forces can maintain energy.
Regional hegemon
The sense that Israel is making an attempt to grow to be the area’s sole dominant energy appeared to be confirmed in July when Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Turkiye and particular envoy to Syria, made a startling admission: that Israel would like a fragmented and divided Syria.
“Robust nation-states are a menace – particularly Arab states, [which] are seen as a menace to Israel,” he mentioned.
The subtext for Ankara was clear: Israel believes it must be the hegemon within the area to really feel safe.
Israel’s actions bear this out. It has bombed Syria dozens of instances since December 8 – when former President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow – and grabbed Syrian territory within the quick chaos.
It decapitated a lot of Hezbollah’s leadership in 2024 and nonetheless occupies components of Lebanon regardless of a ceasefire, lengthy looking for to weaken or destroy the group.
In June, Israel attacked Iran, sparking a 12-day conflict that struck Iranian army and nuclear services, killing senior commanders and nuclear scientists, and dragged within the US.
The assaults aimed not solely to weaken Tehran’s defence and nuclear capabilities but in addition to push Washington in direction of regime change, focusing on considered one of Israel’s strongest rivals within the area.
Israel could now view Turkiye as the following potential problem to its regional hegemony, explaining its adamant stance that Ankara won’t be allowed to ascertain new bases in Syria that “may threaten Israel” – as Netanyahu has beforehand mentioned.
“The primary manifestation of Turkish-Israeli friction will probably seem within the Syrian entrance within the land and air,” warns Cem Gurdeniz, a retired Turkish admiral and architect of the Blue Homeland doctrine, a maritime technique that requires Turkiye to claim its sovereignty and safeguard its pursuits throughout the encircling seas – the Aegean, Japanese Mediterranean and Black Sea.
“In parallel, Israel’s deepening army and intelligence footprint in Cyprus, tightly woven with Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration below American auspices, is perceived in Ankara as a deliberate try and fracture and include the Blue Homeland,” Gurdeniz advised Al Jazeera.
“To Ankara, this isn’t a defensive posture by Israel however an offensive encirclement technique that might threaten each Turkish maritime freedom and the safety of the Turkish Cypriot individuals,” he added, referring to Turkiye’s ties to the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is simply Turkiye recognises, quite than the remainder of Cyprus, which is dominated by Greek Cypriots.
The division of Cyprus is a serious supply of discontent between Turkiye, Greece and Cyprus.
Studies that Cyprus obtained Israeli air-defence techniques final week are prone to elevate alarm in Ankara.
In tandem in Syria, Israel has made no secret that what it considers to be a steady Syria “can solely be a federal” one with “completely different autonomies”, Israeli International Minister Gideon Sa’ar advised European leaders at a gathering in Brussels in February.
Turkiye, however, backs the brand new Syrian administration, which insists on a centralised and unitary state.
For now, tensions between Israel and Turkiye might be described as “managed”, says Gokhan Cinkara, director of Necmettin Erbakan College’s International and Regional Research Centre in Turkiye.
“At current, the riskiest situation for Turkiye can be an uncontrolled outbreak of intergroup battle in Syria. Because of this, Ankara is probably going advising the brand new Syrian administration to behave with a level of rational pragmatism,” Cinkara advised Al Jazeera.
“The immaturity of Syria’s safety equipment makes any potential intergroup clashes more durable to include, and dangers turning it into protracted ethnic and sectarian conflicts. Within the brief time period, due to this fact, adopting a unitary mannequin appears troublesome,” he added.
Crimson traces and dangers
Netanyahu, for his half, is pushing for a “Balkanised” Syria, divided alongside ethnic and non secular traces, demanding the demilitarisation of much of southern Syria, principally populated by the nation’s Druze inhabitants.
That could be a transfer that, if carried out, may gentle the touchpaper and ignite calls for from members of different teams within the nation, together with the Kurds and Alawite, for their very own tailor-made variations of de facto autonomy.
“Turkiye, nonetheless, has clear purple traces in Syria,” says Murat Yesiltas, director of international coverage analysis at SETA, a assume tank in Ankara with shut ties to the federal government.
“The US and Israel’s try and reshape the regional order carries numerous risks and dangers, deepening fragmentation within the Center East,” Yesiltas advised Al Jazeera.
In March, Israel’s most influential safety assume tank, the Institute for Nationwide Safety Research (INSS), printed a bit that warned towards the nascent peace course of between Turkiye and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is looking for to shut a chapter on a four-decade armed marketing campaign towards the Turkish state in a battle that has killed greater than 40,000 individuals.
The INSS warned that this might “weaken the flexibility of the Kurds in Syria to proceed to function autonomously” and contribute to Ankara “increasing its affect in southern Syria, in a manner that might improve the menace to Israeli freedom of motion”.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz made clear that swaths of newly occupied territory in southern Syria will probably be held for an “limitless period of time”.
As Turkiye scoped out potential army bases in Syria’s Homs province and the principle airport in Hama province in coordination with the newly established Damascus authorities, Israel bombed the websites.
“If Tel Aviv persists on this path, a battle between Ankara and Tel Aviv will grow to be inevitable. Turkiye can not settle for insurance policies that perpetuate instability on its southern border,” mentioned Yesiltas.
However full-blown rivalry is “not inevitable” as each side recognise the prices of confrontation, significantly given financial interdependence, Andreas Krieg, affiliate professor of safety research at King’s Faculty London, advised Al Jazeera.
“Israel’s menace to Turkiye just isn’t standard army aggression however quite the focusing on of Turkish pursuits by way of oblique means,” mentioned Krieg, talking about Ankara’s pursuits in Syria, the Japanese Mediterranean and the South Caucasus.
Given Washington’s full and seemingly unconditional help for Netanyahu’s bid to “reshape the area”, Krieg says Ankara’s prescription is to “strengthen strategic deterrence, particularly by means of expanded air-defence, missile techniques and intelligence capabilities” and to pursue regional coalitions with Qatar, Jordan and Iraq whereas sustaining open channels with Washington to “keep away from full strategic isolation”.
“Ankara should recognise that future flashpoints usually tend to emerge within the gray zone – covert operations, air strikes, and proxy competitors – than in formal declarations or diplomacy,” he added.
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