Turkish Air Force F-16s displayed at Konya Airport during the Anatolian Eagle Air Force exercise in Konya, Turkey, on July 2, 2025. Neither Israel nor Turkey wants a conflict, but their irreconcilable views of Syria make it more likely, writes Mohammed Ayoob. (Shutterstock/Evren Kalinbacak)

Are Turkey and Israel Heading Toward Confrontation?

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The Trump administration should act quickly to de-escalate tensions between its two closest partners in the Middle East.

Another serious interstate crisis appears to be looming on the horizon in the Middle East, this one pitting Israel against Turkey. It was foreshadowed two years ago by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statement in October 2024, shortly before the rebel assault that brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, that “Israel’s next target will be Turkey.”

The Israeli air strike on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18 may eventually be remembered as the beginning of the fulfillment of that prophecy and the moment when the long deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations acquired a distinctly military dimension. The base, roughly 50 miles from the Turkish border, had been visited only hours earlier by a Turkish military delegation examining rehabilitation work. Israel subsequently said it acted because Syria was on the verge of violating a security understanding by permitting a Turkish military deployment there. Turkey and Syria rejected Israel’s justification.  

More remarkable was the reaction of Tom Barrack, the American ambassador to Turkey and President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Syria. Barrack disclosed that Ankara had not been warned of the Israeli operation and therefore could reasonably have interpreted Israeli aircraft approaching the Turkish frontier as a threat and scrambled its own fighters. He went further, suggesting that one possible explanation was that Israel had been “baiting the Turks” into a military confrontation.  

Whatever Israel’s precise motivation, the episode demonstrates how radically the strategic landscape in the Middle East has changed. Turkey and Israel were once pillars of an informal regional alignment. During the 1990s,........

© The National Interest