Ankara Occupies Syria, Then Lectures Israel on Sovereignty

On August 18, Israeli aircraft struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in eastern Idlib, about 70 kilometers from the Turkish border, cratering its runway and storage facilities. Eight strikes caused significant material damage but no casualties. Damascus called it a flagrant violation of its sovereignty. Ankara accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of pursuing “expansionist and destabilizing” policies ahead of Israel’s October 27 election. Washington’s ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, called it an “unnecessary escalation.”

Israel’s response was clear: Jerusalem and Damascus had agreed to a security status quo, but Syria was “on the verge of breaching” it by allowing Turkish troops to deploy at an airbase near Aleppo. Israel had warned Damascus repeatedly. Damascus proceeded anyway.

No one should take Turkey or Barrack’s protestations seriously.

Turkey’s long history of violating Syrian sovereignty

In March 2025, Turkish military teams surveyed runways and hangars at the T4 and Palmyra airbases in Homs province and the main airfield in Hama, as Ankara negotiated a joint defense arrangement with Syria’s new rulers. A follow-up inspection on March 25 never happened, because Israeli jets struck both sites hours earlier. Israel struck T4 again in early April, leaving it unusable by one regional intelligence assessment.

The message was identical then and now: Israel will not permit another air force, particularly one belonging to a government that has threatened it with invasion, to erode its freedom of action over Syria. Israel’s perception that Ankara’s military footprint in Syria endangers Israeli security is not new. Jerusalem has argued this for over a year.

Israel’s red lines are about capability, not rhetoric

Israel’s red lines in Syria are not about Ahmad al-Sharaa’s rhetoric. They are about capability and trust. Sharaa is a former al-Qaeda commander welcomed in Western capitals on the hope that he has changed. Perhaps he has. But his army still houses foreign jihadist formations, including units from the Turkistan Islamic Party, whose leadership has been linked to al-Qaeda’s Shura Council. Islamic State is reconstituting as the American footprint shrinks.

Israel does not have the luxury of assuming that a state built on those foundations, armed and air-covered by Ankara, will remain permanently non-belligerent. Sober analysts have remarked that a functional Syria-Israel security understanding is achievable, which is precisely why a Turkish garrison inside the deal’s perimeter is so corrosive.

Turkey’s consent argument is retroactive legalism

Ankara’s rebuttal is that its presence in Syria is lawful because Damascus consents, while Israel’s is not. Turkey has also flatly denied any deployment to Abu al-Duhur, calling the Israeli claim a manufactured pretext, though Israeli officials say highly sensitive intelligence on that deployment was shared with Washington beforehand.

The consent argument deserves scrutiny. Turkey has seldom waited for permission when it entered Syria. It launched three major cross-border operations: Euphrates Shield in 2016, Olive Branch against Afrin in 2018, and Peace Spring across Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad in 2019. Each was justified as self-defense against terrorism, each conducted over Damascus’s explicit objection. Turkey armed and paid Islamist and jihadist militias throughout the war. It still controls swaths of the north and pays the salaries of former Syrian National Army factions now folded into the new Syrian military, factions documented as detaining, extorting, and abusing civilians.

The operative Turkish doctrine is this: Ankara may cross borders and occupy foreign territory when it perceives a national security threat, and everyone else must accept it. However, Israel may not. Turkey spent a decade dismantling Syrian sovereignty and has spent the past twenty months invoking Syria’s “territorial integrity” as though it were a founding principle. This is not law, but regional positioning dressed as law.

What did Israel destroy at Abu al-Duhur?

We do not know precisely what specific asset or activity the IDF destroyed at Abu al-Duhur. Israel has stated its rationale without exposing its intelligence, which is standard practice when sources and methods are at stake. But the Turkish general staff almost certainly knows exactly what was there, knows Israel would not tolerate it, and has strong reasons to prefer the conversation stay at the level of Netanyahu’s electoral motives. The election argument, notably, is Ankara’s centerpiece, and it conveniently substitutes a claim about Israeli intent for any account of Turkish conduct.

Syrians pay the price for Turkish expansion

Ankara also prefers not to discuss a Syrian constituency. In July 2024, anti-Turkish riots swept the Turkish-controlled north; protesters burned Turkish facilities and five people were killed. That resentment has not evaporated. Ordinary Syrians increasingly grasp that Turkish expansion inside their country reliably invites Israeli bombs onto Syrian runways, and that they absorb the costs of a rivalry they did not choose.

Turkey has no standing to lecture Israel on terrorism

Consent from Damascus, in any case, settles nothing regarding Israel. A NATO member that refuses to designate Hamas, hosts its leadership, and on whose soil Israeli intelligence recently exposed an Iranian-directed Hamas finance network moving hundreds of millions of dollars, does not get to lecture a state which has legitimate terrorism concerns. Nor is Erdogan’s escalatory rhetoric a product of October 7. It runs from the “one minute” confrontation with Shimon Peres at Davos in 2009, through the Mavi Marmara, to his 2024 boast that Turkey might enter Israel “just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya,” a line he repeated in April 2026.

Washington should ask why the base mattered

Washington’s instinct to de-escalate is sound, and a trilateral deconfliction mechanism is worth building; however, earlier attempts produced little. But reflexively blaming Jerusalem, before the intelligence picture is public, tells Ankara that escalation is cost-free and that American pressure flows in one direction. Erdogan has spent years being told his threats are mere rhetoric. Israel declined to make that assumption at T4, and declined again at Abu al-Duhur. Tom Barrack should ask why a base near Aleppo mattered enough to strike before concluding it should not have been struck.

As the prophet Isaiah taught, “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people does not consider” (Isaiah 1:3). Israel knows its enemies, and it acts accordingly. Turkey would do well to remember that the God of Israel does not sleep, and neither does the IDF.