When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled late last year, it looked like a golden opportunity for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For more than a decade, the war next door had burdened Ankara with problems that it could not fix: millions of Syrian refugees straining domestic politics, U.S.-backed Kurdish militias entrenching along Turkey’s border, and a battlefield dominated by Russian and Iranian influence that left Ankara exposed to Moscow’s and Tehran’s whims.
Assad’s fall, especially at the hands of forces close to Turkey, seemed to promise relief on every front—and it could not have come at a better time. Erdogan and his nationalist allies had just reopened dialogue with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan to secure the pro-Kurdish party’s support in parliament, a maneuver aimed at clearing the way for Erdogan’s reelection bid in 2028. Undermining the PKK’s Syrian wing would improve the odds of a breakthrough in the dialogue with Ocalan.
The calculation in Ankara was that with a friendly government in Damascus, Turkey could reshape Syria to its liking. Eight months on, however, the post-Assad landscape has delivered the opposite—a Syria that is creating bigger headaches for Ankara than Assad ever did.
Israel has quickly emerged as Ankara’s biggest challenge in post-Assad Syria. Distrustful of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa because of his jihadi past, Israel wasted no time expanding its footprint once the old regime collapsed. Less than a day after Assad’s fall, Israeli forces pushed across the Golan Heights—territory seized in the 1967 Six-Day War—and took over abandoned Syrian army fortifications. Within 10 days, Israel’s air force had pounded hundreds of targets across Syria. On the ground, its military has crept at least 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) deeper into Syrian territory, carving out nine outposts, paving roads, and laying minefields.
Israel frames these moves as defensive—necessary to prevent jihadi threats and protect vulnerable minorities. Ankara sees something else: an Israeli advance that destabilizes the fragile new Syria and undermines the peace process that Erdogan has opened with the PKK.
Turkey’s unease with Israel’s actions in Syria reflects deeper anxieties about Israel’s emergence as a regional military hegemon. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Israel has expanded its reach, attacking Iran and its proxies; entrenching its presence in neighboring states; and most recently, striking Turkey’s regional ally, Qatar. For Ankara, weakening Tehran is a welcome development—but Israel’s increasingly unrestrained posture is not. Now, with some Israeli commentators warning that Turkey is “the new Iran” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to prevent the revival of the Ottoman Empire, the threat has started to feel personal.
Turkish concern is also rooted in a structural shift: Unlike in the 1990s, Israel no longer needs Turkey the way it once did. Back then, the two countries forged a strategic partnership against common enemies—Iran and Syria—culminating in the landmark 1996 military cooperation agreement. Israel modernized Turkey’s air fleet, transferred advanced missile technology, and shared intelligence, while Turkey gave Israel rare legitimacy in a hostile Muslim neighborhood, NATO cover, and a bridge to Europe.
Today, however, Israel has steadily reduced its reliance on Ankara—in defense, diplomacy, and energy alike. Israel has replaced Ankara with Nicosia and Athens, forging close military and diplomatic ties with Cyprus and Greece. Within the European Union, both states now serve as Israel’s advocates at moments of tension, especially over the Palestinian question. Militarily, joint naval and air exercises with Greece and Cyprus have filled the vacuum left by the collapse of Israeli-Turkish defense cooperation.
The Abraham Accords deepened this shift. Where once Turkey’s recognition gave Israel rare legitimacy in the Muslim world, peace with several Arab states has made Ankara far less central to Israel’s international standing.
The result is stark. Israel today is more militarily powerful, emboldened to reshape the region by force, and far less dependent on Turkey. For Turkish policymakers, that makes Israel the most immediate threat to Ankara’s ambitions in Syria.
The bloodshed in Suwayda has confirmed Ankara’s worst fears. What began with the abduction of a Druze vegetable seller by a Bedouin gang quickly spiraled into a sectarian inferno—reprisals, executions, and community-wide violence in a region long scarred by Druze-Bedouin rivalries. The transitional government of Sharaa dispatched troops to restore order, but the intervention collapsed on both tactical and political fronts. Not only did government forces fail to contain the fighting, but it was also accused of committing abuses against Druze civilians.
Israel swiftly capitalized on the chaos. Acting on its February pledge to keep southern Syria demilitarized and to shield the Druze, Israeli jets struck Syrian Defense Ministry facilities in Damascus and even targeted an area near the presidential palace. Within days, Syrian forces pulled out of Suwayda.
The fallout is devastating for Damascus. The violence has laid bare the weakness of Sharaa’s interim government and the strength of Israel’s determination to police Syria’s south.
More troubling for Ankara, the Suwayda crisis has wrecked its own plans: the effort, backed by Turkey, to fold Syrian Kurdish forces into state structures now faces even fiercer resistance. In the wake of the bloodletting, Syria’s minorities—including the Kurds—have turned further against Sharaa’s centralized vision of rule, hardening demands for autonomy.
Erdogan and his nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli—one of the main architects of the Ocalan talks—are deeply alarmed that Syrian Kurds, buoyed by Israel’s pledge to shield Syria’s minorities, will double down on demands for autonomy. That prospect undercuts Ankara’s central narrative: that it has “defeated” the PKK, even as a PKK-linked militia entrenched on Turkey’s southern border governs swaths of Syrian territory.
Ankara had banked on U.S. President Donald Trump and his envoy, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, to defuse both the Israel and Kurdish dilemmas. Barrack echoed Ankara’s talking points—insisting that federalism was not the solution, pressing Syrian Kurds to cut a deal with Damascus, and even trying to rein in Israeli operations. But those efforts yielded little, and Suwayda has become the clearest symbol of that failure. Confronted with mounting challenges in the new Syria, Erdogan is reaching back to the old playbook: military intervention and a plea for Russia’s help.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has openly threatened military action against Syrian Kurdish forces if they seek to divide Syria, while also inking a deal with Damascus to supply weapons and training. Ankara is also urging Damascus to deepen ties with Moscow, which has been marginalized in post-Assad Syria but is negotiating with the new leadership to keep its bases. For Ankara, a Russian foothold could serve as a counterweight to Israel’s expanding presence and bolster efforts to rein in Kurdish autonomy. Yet these gambits carry serious risks—for both Turkey and Damascus.
A new military campaign against the Syrian Kurds would hand a victory to hard-liners inside the PKK who never trusted Ocalan’s dialogue with Erdogan and opposed calls for the group to disarm. That, in turn, would jeopardize a process central to Erdogan’s plan for rewriting the rules to run again in 2028. Since Assad’s fall, Ankara has been careful not to appear as though it seeks to dominate post-Assad Syria—a posture aimed at reassuring Gulf states and Western capitals alike. Even if an operation were carried out by Syrian troops with Turkish backing rather than Turkish forces directly, it would shatter that carefully cultivated image.
A military operation against the Syrian Kurds, who still enjoy sympathy in many Western capitals that are vital to Sharaa’s push for foreign investment and reconstruction aid, would also damage Sharaa, who has worked to persuade the West that he intends to respect minority rights and engage them in good faith.
It is far from clear that Russia’s limited footprint at Syrian bases—or Damascus drawing closer to Moscow—will do much to restrain Israel or the Kurds. In June, Russia stood by as Israel struck Iranian nuclear sites, despite the “strategic partnership” that Moscow had signed with Tehran just months earlier. The reality is that Russia values its ties with Israel: Both militaries operate in Syria, and each is careful to avoid a direct clash. Israel, for its part, has stayed largely neutral on Ukraine, wary of antagonizing Russia given its sizable Jewish community.
Nor is Russia a reliable partner on the Kurdish question. Unlike Turkey, the United States, or the EU, the Kremlin has never listed the PKK as a terrorist group, and it even allowed Syrian Kurds to open a representative office in Moscow in 2016. If anything, Turkey’s push to pull Damascus closer to Moscow risks backfiring—alienating the United States and Europe, which has welcomed Russia’s diminished influence after Assad’s fall. For Sharaa, embracing Moscow could not only sour ties with the West but also inflame a domestic base that loathes Russia for propping up the old regime.
There is no quick fix to Ankara’s mounting problems in Syria—and dusting off the old playbook won’t work. What Turkey needs is a different vision altogether. Clinging to the idea of a Turkey-style centralized state ignores the reality that such a model will not produce the stability that Ankara so badly needs.
The alternative may not be outright federalism, but a Syria where minorities, including the Kurds, enjoy genuine autonomy in local affairs and constitutional guarantees of their rights. And there is no better moment to explore this path: Ankara is already in talks with the PKK at home, and Turkish officials are floating the idea of a new constitution that could address some of Turkey’s own Kurdish demands. Syria’s future—and the political dividends that Erdogan hoped to reap both at home and abroad—may hinge on embracing that shift.