A ‘Sunni Crescent’ Composed of Syria and Turkey Threatens Israel
The Syrian jihadist government has been consolidating its power by systematically attacking the minorities — Alawites, Druze, and the Kurds — in the country. It has just taken over the Kurdish-majority city of Qashmili, and has forced the dismantlement of the Kurdish autonomous region in northeast Syria, with the Kurdish militia of the Syrian Democratic Forces now being integrated into the Syrian National Army.
And Turkey is delighted that the Syrian Kurds will no longer be a threat to Turkish interests. More on the Damascus-Ankara “Sunni Axis” can be found here: “Why the fall of Kurdish autonomy is Israel’s strategic nightmare – opinion,” by Amine Ayoub, Jerusalem Post, February 10, 2026:
The headlines from Syria this week are being celebrated as a triumph of “territorial unification.” The new Syrian Sunni Islamist regime, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has successfully consolidated power in the strategic city of Qamishli.
Under the guise of a “phased integration” deal, the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria has effectively been dismantled.
The post-Assad honeymoon – a period of hope that a new Damascus would usher in a pluralistic, decentralized democracy – is officially over.
There is no pluralism in al-Sharaa’s Syria. The minorities — non-Arab Kurds, Shia Arabs, and non-Muslim Druze — have had to submit to a Sunni Arab regime. Power is now centralized in Damascus, where Sunni Arabs are the undisputed rulers.
For Israel, the reality is even more sobering. The demise of the Kurdish buffer in the northeast does not signal a new era of stability; it heralds the birth of a militarized, Islamist “Sunni Crescent” that targets Israeli security with a fervor that the “predictable” Bashar al-Assad never possessed.
For nearly a decade, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) served as a vital, if unofficial, partner in the regional fight against radicalism. Its de facto autonomy provided a geographic and ideological break between the Mediterranean and the Iranian border and, more importantly, a bulwark against Turkish expansionism….
The Kurdish-led SDF had been the Americans’ most effective ally in the war against ISIS. The Kurdish autonomous region has also been a buffer, standing in the way of Turkish expansionism; Erdogan regards the Syrian Kurds as dangerous, because he sees them as potentially linking up with Kurdish separatists in Turkey, and has wanted to crush them.
Now he need no longer do so; the Syrian government has pressured the SDF so relentlessly that the Kurds have agreed for their SDF units to be dismantled and integrated into the Syrian National Army. Yet the Syrian state is not neutral; it is run by Sunni Arabs who are jihadists. The minorities are now merely tolerated; the ruling Sunnis do not treat them as equals.
Turkey has long sought to crush the Kurdish autonomous region in northeast Syria. And now, instead of having to fight the Kurds inside Syria, Ankara has watched as the Syrian army has forced the Kurds to dismantle their SDF forces and to give up their autonomy. Damascus has not objected to the military outposts that Turkey has set up just inside Syria. It sees Ankara as its ally against Kurdish separatists.
Al-Sharaa is not prepared for peace with Israel, despite his claim that he is prepared to make peace “with all of Syria’s neighbors.” He wants back all of the land the IDF seized just north of the Golan Heights, including Mount Hermon. His close ally, Erdogan, more than a year ago called for all the Muslim states to contribute to a pan-Islamic army capable fo defeating Israel, and he left no doubt as to whom he thought was most fitting to lead such an army — himself.
The honeymoon is over, and the era of the “Sunni Crescent” has begun.
