Last week, Israeli aircraft struck the T4 airbase and Hama airport in Syria, along with two other military airbases. The operation, according to several Hebrew media reports, was intended to frustrate Turkish efforts to install air defenses and radar systems at the targeted sites. The Israeli attack forms part of a larger, looming confrontation between Ankara and Jerusalem.
Syria is currently the most active front in this contest. Other points of friction include Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and the eastern Mediterranean. But what are the driving forces behind the dispute, and why have recent months witnessed a sudden, sharp escalation in its intensity? Are Israel and Turkey set on an inevitable collision course?Turkey’s President Recep Tayepp Erdogan and the Islamist AKP have held power in Turkey since 2002. Erdogan’s presidency should be seen in historic terms. The Turkish leader is engaged in the transformation of Turkey, both internally and in its relations with its surroundings.
The recent arrest of Istanbul’s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu is the latest indication that Erdogan has no intention of ceding power through the electoral process.
In recent years, step by step, Erdogan has gutted those power centers in Turkey that might have challenged him; the army, the courts, the media, all have been brought to heel. The political opposition, too, is now being neutralized by administrative means.
Regarding Turkey’s foreign relations, the strategy of Erdogan and his allies has been no less transformational. Ankara has embarked on a strategy of assertion, moving away from the pro-Western stance that characterized Turkish foreign policy in the years of the Cold War.
In place of this pro-US orientation, Turkey has currently embarked on a path that combines alliance with movements of political Islam, with a revanchist, neo-Ottoman outlook, in which Ankara seeks to assert influence unilaterally and then dominate points across a broad swathe of territory stretching from the Gulf to Iraq and the Levant, across the Mediterranean and to Libya.
In seeking to be the dominant power in the region, Turkey has established permanent military bases in Qatar, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, North Cyprus, and Libya. It has launched military operations against its Kurdish foes in Iraq and Syria in 2016, 2018, and 2019, leading to the de facto control of swathes of territory in both countries.
In the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey signed a treaty with Libya in 2019, laying claim to a vast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ); if accepted, it would give Ankara access to natural gas deposits. The agreement was not accepted by Greece, Cyprus, or Israel.
Ongoing friction has resulted as Turkey employs its naval vessels to harass ships exploring for natural gas resources in Greek or Cypriot waters. It is set to announce a similar EEZ with Syria.
In Libya, Ankara’s intervention using proxy forces and drones, as well as its own troops, led to the preservation of the Islamist dominated Government of National Accord in Tripoli.
In a number of the areas, Turkey’s employment of its state forces has gone hand in hand with partnerships with local Sunni movements and militias.
The march of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham from the Turkish-protected Idlib province to Damascus brings for Israel the very real possibility that a new Islamist regime will be built under the tutelage of the hostile and aggressive Erdogan government. Such a regime will form a powerful new addition to Turkey’s expanding list of regional assets.
The placing of Turkey’s S-400 air defense systems in Syria would make Israel unable to respond to aggression, or to use Syrian airspace on the way to Iran. A new, powerful, centralized, Islamist Syria, with an army built by Turkey, would form a powerful instrument in the hands of a Turkish president who has made his politicidal intentions toward Israel very clear.
It is for this reason that Israel has evidently determined that no such new, jihadi regime can be permitted to come into existence. The pattern of Israeli activity in Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad reflects this decision.
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