When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled late last year, it looked like a golden opportunity for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For more than a decade, the war next door had burdened Ankara with problems that it could not fix: millions of Syrian refugees straining domestic politics, U.S.-backed Kurdish militias entrenching along Turkey’s border, and a battlefield dominated by Russian and Iranian influence that left Ankara exposed to Moscow’s and Tehran’s whims.

Assad’s fall, especially at the hands of forces close to Turkey, seemed to promise relief on every front—and it could not have come at a better time. Erdogan and his nationalist allies had just reopened dialogue with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan to secure the pro-Kurdish party’s support in parliament, a maneuver aimed at clearing the way for Erdogan’s reelection bid in 2028. Undermining the PKK’s Syrian wing would improve the odds of a breakthrough in the dialogue with Ocalan.

When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled late last year, it looked like a golden opportunity for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For more than a decade, the war next door had burdened Ankara with problems that it could not fix: millions of Syrian refugees straining domestic politics, U.S.-backed Kurdish militias entrenching along Turkey’s border, and a battlefield dominated by Russian and Iranian influence that left Ankara exposed to Moscow’s and Tehran’s whims.

Assad’s fall, especially at the hands of forces close to Turkey, seemed to promise relief on every front—and it could not have come at a better time. Erdogan and his nationalist allies had just reopened dialogue with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan to secure the pro-Kurdish party’s support in parliament, a maneuver aimed at clearing the way for Erdogan’s reelection bid in 2028. Undermining the PKK’s Syrian wing would improve the odds of a breakthrough in the dialogue with Ocalan.

The calculation in Ankara was that with a friendly government in Damascus, Turkey could reshape Syria to its liking. Eight months on, however, the post-Assad landscape has delivered the opposite—a Syria that is creating bigger headaches for Ankara than Assad ever did.

Israel has quickly emerged as Ankara’s biggest challenge in post-Assad Syria. Distrustful of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa because of his jihadi past, Israel wasted no time expanding its footprint once the old regime collapsed. Less than a day after Assad’s fall, Israeli forces pushed across the Golan Heights—territory seized in the 1967 Six-Day War—and took over abandoned Syrian army fortifications. Within 10 days, Israel’s air force had pounded hundreds of targets across Syria. On the ground, its military

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