IN SYRIA, THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON TURKEY AND ISRAEL / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

In Syria, the Future Depends on Turkey and Israel

With Iran out, the Turks and Israelis are the biggest power brokers – and competitors.

By: Kamran Bokhari

The fall of the Syrian regime degraded Iran’s position in the country and, in doing so, has made Syria a battleground for the competition between Turkey and Israel. 

The two have a shared interest in keeping Syria from becoming a power vacuum, but they have different perceptions of the threats a new power poses to them. 

For Turkey, the threat is from Kurdish separatists; for Israel, from Sunni jihadists. 

The future of the conflict will depend largely on how each pursues its imperatives and tries to overcome its respective constraints.

On Dec. 18, Israel rejected Turkish objections to its military actions in Syria. 

A day earlier, the Turkish Foreign Ministry had criticized Israel for expanding settlements in the Golan Heights, calling it part of Israel’s “expansion of borders through occupation.” 

In its response on X, the Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Turkey for its own military presence in northern Syria and for “Turkish aggression and violence” against Syrian Kurds. 

Separately, during a visit to Mount Hermon in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military will remain in a buffer zone inside Syria that Israel Defense Forces seized until another arrangement is in place “that ensures Israel’s security.”

Syria’s new Turkish-supported leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has said the new Syrian state that his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is trying to create doesn’t seek any confrontation with Israel. 

He has said that all armed rebel factions will be dissolved and that their members will be integrated into state security organs. 

Even so, Israel is likely to remain suspicious of HTS; it’s a Sunni jihadist group with a history of ties with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. 

From the Israeli point of view, Israel lives under constant threat of attacks from Islamist groups that consolidate power on its borders.

Therefore, the IDF is unlikely to withdraw to its side of the border anytime soon. 

And even if it pulled back to the ceasefire line of 1973, Israel would still be occupying the Golan Heights, which will be a long-term fault line with any government that takes power in Damascus. 

At this point, it is not even clear that HTS and the other rebel groups can land on a power-sharing agreement on their own, much less with the country’s many minority groups. 

Thus is Israel’s dilemma: It cannot afford anarchy in Syria, but neither can it afford a government that is dominated by Islamists.

To prevent that from happening, it will need to coordinate with Turkey. 

They continue to have close diplomatic ties despite the downturn in their relationship under the Erdogan government – the main backer of the HTS-led coalition that toppled the Syrian regime. 

Unlike Iran, whose radical regional agenda led to the confrontation with Israel during much of 2024 and resulted in the collapse of the Assad regime, Turkey has no desire for conflict with Israel. 

But Ankara does want to be the leader of the region and the broader Muslim world – an ambition that will necessarily put it at odds with Israel, especially amid the ongoing fallout of the Oct. 7 attacks.

Until then, Ankara will have its work cut out for it in Syria. 

In the short and medium term, it will prioritize the formation of a stable government in Damascus and the suppression of Kurdish separatism. 

The problem is that the latter undermines the former. 

The U.S.-backed, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces control large swathes of territory, stretching from Syria’s northeastern border with Turkey southward to the Euphrates River. 

Turkey wants to push the SDF from its border and help HTS and other Sunni Arab groups to take control of the Arab-majority areas along the Euphrates – the areas the Syrian Kurds took over after the defeat of the Islamic State. 

Put differently, Ankara wants to shrink the area over which Syrian Kurds have held dominion for a decade. 

Ultimately, Turkey will probably want to incorporate the Syrian Kurds into a federal political structure along the lines of what happened in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. 

But in sharp contrast with what happened a generation ago in post-Saddam Iraq, the United States is not willing to commit too many resources to Syria. 

The Erdogan government is hoping that it can reach an understanding with the incoming Trump administration regarding its concerns about the SDF.

Regardless, so long as Turkey remains hostile to the Syrian Kurds, it will be unable to achieve its objective of having Sunni Arab proxies forge a sustainable new political order in Damascus. 

This creates the kind of chaos in which the Islamic State could revive and thrive. 

Israel has an incentive to help the Syrian Kurds, provided they can be used as leverage against Turkey. 

And Iran, degraded though it may be, retains influence in Syria and will do everything it can to prevent Sunni Arab empowerment in eastern Syria from spreading across the border into Sunni Arab-majority areas of western Iraq, where it could pose a challenge to the Shiite-dominated regime in Baghdad.

There are many reasons Turkey and Israel could cooperate in managing Syria. 

But there are as many things that could lead them to conflict. 

In the long run, Syria will be what these two regional powers can agree on.