Both Israel and Turkey were at the forefront of backing this month’s regime change in Syria. The takeover of Syria by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alters the landscape of the region, but Turkey and Israel may quickly find themselves at odds over who’s really calling the shots.
Israel has been engaging with the HTS, though officials say they’re passing messages and are not in “direct” contract with them. HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani has been loudly trying to reassure Israel that Syria won’t be used as a launchpad for attacks on them.
HTS efforts to curry favor with Israel began before their offensive even ended in them taking Damascus, but the level of influence Tel Aviv can expect to have pales in comparison with what Turkey has.
Turkey was very openly backing the HTS-led offensive, and Julani says that Turkey and Syria will have close strategic relations after the regime change. Moreover, Julani says that Turkey will have “priority” over all other countries in the reconstruction effort in Syria.
Though Israel’s goal was to see Syria removed from the Iranian alliance of nations, they’re not necessarily much more comfortable with Syria becoming a client state for Turkey. Turkey is another regional rival for Israel, albeit not one with such overt military hostility as Iran.
Israel’s opposition leader Yair Golan was expressing concern today that Turkey might end up too dominant in Syria. He couched this somewhat as a concern about Sunni Islamists dominating Syria (though that clearly wasn’t a problem for Israel during the HTS takeover), but it also ended up being a call to back Syria’s Kurds to prevent Turkey from moving against them.
Israel is on relatively friendly terms with the Kurds, and Turkey plainly isn’t. Turkey’s backing of the HTS was less about getting rid of Assad and more about believing HTS would be harder on Kurdish autonomy. The HTS government is already talking about ending Kurdish autonomy. Turkey has launched multiple offensives against Syria’s Kurdish SDF in recent years, and evidence is they’re poised to begin another one.
That complicates Israel’s policy toward Syria, beyond seizing new territory in the southwest. They don’t necessarily have designs on picking a fight with a mostly compliant HTS, but backing Kurdish autonomy in the northeast would be an obvious way to limit Turkey’s influence over Syria. Navigating potential conflicts in those interests is going to be a challenge.
