Syria’s decade-long-plus civil war has weakened and divided it to the extent that Turkey from the north and Israel from the south have been emboldened to encroach upon its territory out of a sense of their own defensive requirements. Indeed, it may only be a matter of time before the two intruders will meet and clash over their respective felt needs and contending ambitions. 

Such a dynamic is all the more facilitated by the virtual collapse of Iran and Hezbollah as barriers separating Turkey and Israel in Syria. Recent Israeli military successes against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and military strikes against Iran have brought this vacuum about. In addition, Assad’s sudden collapse this past December has virtually eliminated his Russian ally as another barrier. Putin invested a lot in Syria, but his war in Ukraine has also forced him largely to abandon Syria. Finally, the new US president Donald Trump’s apparent lack of interest in what he has derisively termed only sand and death has also facilitated this sudden development featuring a potential Turkey vs. Israel clash in Syria. 

So what will happen? At first glance war between the two would seem unlikely given their long history together. For example, Turkey was the first Islamic state to recognize the new state of Israel in March 1949. In the 1990s, the two states were even on the verge of establishing a de facto alliance against Syria, Iraq, and Iran because of their mutual threat perceptions. Israeli tourists flocked to Turkish beaches. Centuries earlier, the Ottoman Empire had offered Europe’s beleaguered Jews sanctuary. Even today there is an admittedly declining, but still important Jewish minority in Turkey, a situation that no longer exists in any other Middle Eastern state because of Israel’s never ending, longue-duree conflict against the Palestinians.  

On the other hand, Erdogan’s Turkey and Netanyahu’s Israel have engaged in heated pyrotechnics in recent years. Erdogan’s desire to assume a leading role in the Middle East and his strong Islamic identity, led him to begin taking increasingly anti-Israeli positions. For example, when Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas in 2004, Erdogan accused Israel of terrorism. Soon afterwards in 2005, he visited Israel and toured the occupied territories. According to one of his main biographers, Professor M. Hakan Yavuz, the Palestinian dispossession he saw helped convert him to a strong anti-Israeli mindset. He began to see himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause and to provide political support to Hamas, which was ruling Gaza while openly calling for the destruction of Israel. Some of the leaders of Hamas were even based in Turkey. 

The three-week-long Israeli Cast Lead operation against Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Gazans/Palestinians and a further precipitous decline in Turkish-Israeli relations. In most major Turkish cities there were demonstrations against the Israeli attacks, while the West remained quiet. Erdogan was not only furious but felt disrespected because when he had just met with then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, the Israeli leader had mentioned nothing about it. Then at the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2009, the Turkish leader sharply proclaimed to Israeli president Shimon Peres that the fighting in Gaza was “very wrong,” and that “many people have been killed” before ostentatiously storming off stage. Erdogan’s prestige in Turkey and the Islamic world rose to new heights as he seemed to be the main proponent of the down trodden Palestinian and Islamic cause. 

This antagonism reached an even greater nadir on May 31, 2010, when Israeli troops boarded the Mavi Marmara—a ship carrying Islamic activists from Turkey who were trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza to deliver aid—and in the ensuing melee killed nine. Not until March 22, 2013, did Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu finally apologize to Turkey for the deaths, and the two agree to restore normal diplomatic relations. However, they did not exchange new ambassadors until the end of 2016. 

New fighting in Gaza, however, over the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, led to further Turkish-Israeli diplomatic difficulties. On May 14, 2018, Erdogan accused Israel of carrying out a “genocide” against the Palestinians and being a “terrorist and apartheid State.”  The now popularly elected Turkish president, then seeking imminent re-election again, proclaimed to a summit of Islamic leaders that included Jordanian king Abdullah II, Palestinian Authority prime minister Rami Hamdallah, Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah, Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamas Al-Thani and even the foreign ministers of long alienated Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others, in Istanbul, “There is no difference between the atrocity faced by the Jewish people in Europe 75 years ago and the brutality that our Gaza brothers are subjected to.” Throughout the day, Erdogan basked in the light of large, adoring crowds thronging the massive Yenikap meeting area on the shores of the Sea of Marmara in Istanbul. 

Erdogan and Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu exchanged further insults in May 2018 with Netanyahu concluding that “a man who sends thousands of Turkish soldiers to hold the occupation of northern Cyprus and invades Syria . . . [and] whose hands are stained with the blood of countless Kurdish citizens in Turkey and Syria is the last one who can preach to us about combat ethics.” Erdogan’s rows with Greece and Cyprus over gas exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean also involved Israel as well as Egypt and France. As a result, Ankara’s Blue Homeland Doctrine calling for a more aggressive stance on maritime rights was faced in March 2021 with a multilateral adversary bloc that has taken steps toward institutionalizing itself through the EastMed pipeline project and the Cairo-based East Mediterranean Gas Forum.

All this, of course, was only a preliminary setting for Erdogan’s even more stridden denunciations of Israel’s actions against and killing of Muslims in Gaza and then Lebanon following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Erdogan was particularly angry when Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, on July 31, 2024. The Turkish president regarded Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians and considered Haniyeh a personal friend. Indeed, Erdogan had just invited Haniyeh to address the Turkish parliament. On August 7, 2024, Turkey also joined South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for allegedly committing genocide. In early October 2024, Erdogan even declared in the Turkish parliament, “Driven by the delusion of ‘Promised Lands,’ the Israeli administration, fueled entirely by religious fanaticism, will—after Palestine and Lebanon—undoubtedly set its sights on our homeland. Make no mistake: all current calculations are being made with this in mind.” As of April 2025, more than 50,000 Palestinian civilians had died from the fighting in Gaza. 

Now that Turkey and Israel are both heavily involved in a greatly weakened Syria—largely denuded of other past rivals such as Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah to separate them—what will happen? After all Turkey has been encroaching upon Syrian territory for several years in pursuit of its Kurds whom Erdogan perceives as a terrorist threat. These Turkish inroads can be viewed as part of the Turkish president’s Neo-Ottomanist ambitions to make Turkey great again. The sudden victory of the Turkish-supported Ahmed al-Sharaa’s HTS in December 2024 gave Turkey’s Syrian ambitions even more impetus. Turkey now began positioning itself for an important role in post-Assad Syria that would involve a possible joint defense pact with new Turkish bases in Syria and usage of its air space.  

For its part, Israel has no intention of allowing yet another possible fundamentalist Islamic state on its borders. Thus, in the name of defense, the Jewish state has occupied even more of neighboring Syria, seeing these offensive encroachments as necessary to protect itself from the new Syrian government which only recently saw itself as an ally of al-Qaeda and now supported by Turkey. Thus, in early April 2025, Israel destroyed at least three Syrian air bases that Turkey had been eyeing as bases for its own forces. Along with earlier strikes, these targets included the T4 and Palmyra air bases in Syria’s northern Homs province and the main airport in Hama province. The Israeli strike on T4 also destroyed grounded planes. “T4 is totally unusable now,” revealed one Syrian source. 

These strikes indicated that Israel would not accept any expanded Turkish presence in Syria even though Ankara had declared that its actions in Syria were not meant to threaten Israel. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz called Erdogan an “anti-Semitic dictator” and declared that the air strikes were a warning that “we will not allow the security of the State of Israel to be harmed,” while Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar accused Turkey of seeking a “Turkish protectorate” in Syria. Noa Lazimi—a specialist on Middle East politics at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and former researcher at the Israeli Misgav Institute think tank that advocates pragmatic and realistic approaches in Israeli foreign and defense policy—added that Israel was concerned that Turkey might establish Russian anti-aircraft systems and drones at the T4 air base. The Israeli expert elaborated, “The base would enable Turkey to establish air superiority in this area, and this poses a serious concern for Israel because it undermines its operational freedom in the region.” The Turkish foreign ministry replied calling Israel “the greatest threat to regional security.” Did the Israeli strikes portend the potential of greater ruptures or even war between the two powerful regional militaries over their positioning in Syria? 

Probably not. Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, dampened such speculation by quickly declaring that his country wanted no confrontation with Israel in Syria. An official in Erdogan’s ruling AK Party added, “Turkey, not Israel would pay the highest price among regional states were there to be failure or destabilization in Syria, including with refugees and security.” Similarly, an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity, stated, “We’re not looking for a conflict with Turkey and we hope that Turkey isn’t looking for a conflict with us.” 

Unlike the mostly other regional states, both Turkey and Israel enjoy a tradition of measured statecraft and durability unlikely to countenance descent into such a dangerous war. Furthermore, despite his initial reluctance to engage more fully in the Syrian malaise, US president Donald Trump is unlikely to allow his valuable NATO ally Turkey and even more existential ward Israel to fall into such a war trap. Indeed, Trump would probably relish the favorable publicity of mediating between the two sides. The American president also enjoys good relations with the leaders of both Turkey and Israel. 

Thus, war between the United States/Israel vs. Iran beginning with a preemptive strike by the former to prevent the later from obtaining nuclear weapons, or continuing armed conflict between Israel and Hamas or renewed armed struggle between Israel and Hezbollah or the Houthis in Yemen seems more likely. War involving the always problematic Kurds on several fronts is also possible. All these factors considered, it seems unlikely that Turkey and Israel will actually come to blows.