When the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad abruptly fell to Islamist forces back in December, it took a key Iranian ally off the board. On the heels of Israeli gains against two other Iranian proxies—Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah—it also helped put Israel’s chief regional nemesis on the strategic back foot.
But in the wake of Assad’s ouster, Israeli officials are nervously eyeing another potential challenge. After years of focusing overwhelmingly on the threat posed by Iran and its assorted affiliates, Israel now faces a resurgence of Sunni radicalism, backstopped by an increasingly powerful and imperial-minded Turkey.
There’s ample reason for policymakers in Jerusalem to be concerned. By all accounts, the anti-Assad offensive spearheaded by onetime al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was orchestrated in Ankara. Turkey’s government has long maintained close ties to Syria’s rebel factions and astutely mobilized them to exploit the fragility of the Syrian regime after its patron had been dealt serious setbacks.
Since taking power, HTS has returned the favor. It has launched discussions with Ankara about a strategic partnership that would include a significant military foothold in the country. And it has signaled that it would take a sterner line against the country’s Kurdish rebels (a core Turkish demand). All of which has given Turkey a significant stake in the new, post-Assad Syria.
As a result, “there is a real possibility that Iranian influence in Syria will be replaced by that of Turkey,” says retired IDF Brigadier General Eran Ortal, who previously headed the Dado Center, the Israeli military’s in-house think tank. “No one knows what the possible Turkish role on our border will be. It is a major regional power, a NATO member, a major defense manufacturer and an extremely Islamist, anti-Israel player.” Indeed, “we can already see [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s attempts to use the new Syrian regime to further his claims to the Eastern Mediterranean,” notes Ortal, now a senior scholar at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
He isn’t the only one worried. An Israeli government committee recently warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Turkey was exhibiting increasingly overt regional ambitions—and that those designs could bring Ankara into direct confrontation with Jerusalem in the future.
Turkey was once an ally of the Jewish state.
“The threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat,” the commission, headed by former Israeli National Security Adviser Jacob Nagel, laid out. In response, it counseled, Israel needs to ramp up its defense expenditures, “increasing the defense budget by up to NIS 15 billion [$4.1 billion] annually over the next five years to ensure the Israel Defense Forces are equipped to handle challenges posed by Turkey, alongside other regional threats.”
These concerns are all the more striking because Turkey was once an ally of the Jewish state. Back in the 1990s, following the Soviet collapse, ties between the two countries had blossomed, animated by what analysts termed a “common sense of otherness” amid the region’s shifting politics.
Over time, however, Jerusalem and Ankara fell out in spectacular fashion. The rise of a new, Islamist bent to Turkish politics, encapsulated by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), tilted the country in a decidedly anti-Western direction and away from partnership with Israel as well.
Burgeoning ties to Middle Eastern states led Ankara to become an increasingly vocal critic of Israel, with Erdogan styling himself as a protector of the Palestinians. Escalating diplomatic skirmishes and high-profile clashes such as the notorious 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israel killed ten Turks in the process of raiding a Turkish boat as it took part in a flotilla attempting to break the Gaza blockade, eventually led to a full diplomatic rupture between the two countries.
Ever since, Erdogan has sought to burnish his credentials at Israel’s expense. He has done so by hosting Palestinian radicals; by helping Iran to bust Western sanctions designed to curb its nuclear program; and by agitating for an Islamic alliance to unite against Israel.
So, does Turkey rank as Israel’s next great foe? Not necessarily. As astute Turkey watchers point out, Islamist sentiment in that country is abating, replaced by a more nationalist, realpolitik ethos. Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute calls this the “third phase” of Turkish politics, in which the country is “basically married to no part of the world…just in love with itself.”
Or, more accurately, in love with an expanded vision of its potential regional power and influence. Those prospects have been greatly strengthened by Erdogan’s successful orchestration of Assad’s ouster and are likely to spur still more regional activism on Ankara’s part. It will be up to Israel, long preoccupied with the Iranian threat, to adapt to the results.
Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.