The strikes at Abu al-Duhur matter less for what happened than for what they revealed. Strip away the incident report and what is left is familiar rhetoric. Two regional powers reading the same accounting and drawing opposite lessons from it.

The fall of Assad did not create a vacuum so much as reveal one that existed for years, hidden by a regime too weak to project power but too entrenched to remove. Turkey and Israel are now the two actors with both the capability and the appetite to fill the power void, and they are filling it from opposite directions with opposite security theories. Ankara’s theory is based upon proximity, allowing for influence over Damascus, embedding advisers, directing infrastructure investment, and producing a client government that owes its stability partly to Turkish backing. Israel’s theory is based upon distance, leaving an emptied buffer zone, allowing minimal contention, and the right to strike anything that threatens these. Both theories will collide somewhere in Idlib or Hama. Abu al-Duhur is just where the collision appeared.

When Intent Becomes the Threat

What is more interesting than the Abu al-Duhur strike itself is how each side communicates about it afterward because the language reveals what each government fears. Turkish officials denied the specific claim of a permanent base, while Syrian officials said they had assured Israel that no Turkish presence was planned. Both statements can be true and still miss the point because the Israeli concern (a radar, an air-defense node, or a rotational advisory presence) does not require anything as formal as a “base” to change the operating environment. In short, Israel does not need Turkey to build a garrison to lose strategic value. They only need Turkish sensors to be present in their airspace to reduce Israeli air maneuver. This presents a much lower bar than the word “base” implies, which is why the denials satisfied no one.

When Strategic Ambiguity Becomes a Trigger

The question of whether Turkey was building a pincer is also interesting. The public evidence that Turkey posed a deliberate two-front strategy against Israel is thin and treating this as evidence of one risks manufacturing a conspiracy out of two states pursuing separate, self-interested expansions that happen to be converging. The more useful approach is to question what happens structurally once any two states with unresolved historical friction start operating in the same 200-mile strip of contested territory without a shared rulebook. That is a problem independent of intent. Even if Ankara is not trying to encircle Israel and Israel is not seeking a war with a NATO-adjacent power, the lack of agreed rules leaves each side to interpret future moves through worst-case assumptions. That is what almost happened here. Turkish forces are watching unannounced Israeli jets approach their border and had to decide in real time whether they were witnessing an isolated strike or the opening move of something larger, with no immediate channel to ask.

This interpretation is the part that gets lost when the coverage focuses on “was this an imminent threat?” Whether or not the Abu al-Duhur strikes specifically mattered is only a part of what happened. The mechanism by which it almost escalated one side into acting unilaterally and the other side was forced to guess at intent is likely to recur as long as Turkey keeps deepening its role in Syria and Israel reserves the right to strike in the region, all without an agreed set of boundaries. The airbase is almost incidental. The pattern is the story.

Managing a Rivalry That Won’t Disappear

The outcome desired is not necessarily a settlement of who is “right” about Syria, as both Ankara and Jerusalem are not going to agree on what kind of country a post-Assad Syria should become, and there is no likely version where their interests fully align. Instead, what is achievable and worth pursuing is a much narrower path. They should seek a standing arrangement or a formal conflict-avoidance mechanism where neither side is forced to act on assumptions when it has no knowledge of the other’s intentions. That means real advanced notice or advanced provisions before strikes near the Turkish frontier, instead of an after-the-fact explanation. This means Turkey must be willing to declare, rather than deny, the scope of its military footprint in Syria so that ambiguity stops creating unintended outcomes. It means Damascus, the government with the least power and the most to lose from being squeezed between two much larger militaries, has some voice in such an arrangement that it is not reduced to a battleground that occurs to its detriment.

Conclusion

An arrangement as described herein does not resolve the underlying rivalry. Turkey will keep building influence in Syria because that is what a rising regional power with a long land border does. Israel will retain the right to strike because that has provided security since 1973 and they have no intention to abandon it. However, managed rivalry through a known channel provides a fundamentally different kind of danger than rivalry managed through guesswork under time pressure. The best and most realistic outcome here is not peace between Ankara and Jerusalem. Instead, it is peace by ensuring the next Abu al-Duhur results in a diplomatic phone call instead of deployed border unit deciding if it is watching the start of a war in real time and must react.

Dr. Yashwant Singh is an Indian sociologist working at the intersection of urban studies, development, nature and geopolitics. He holds an M.Phil. in Sociology from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. from the University of Hyderabad. He has published in Across Voices, Modern Diplomacy, Geostrategic Media, South Asia Journal, World Geostrategic Insights, and IA-Forum.  The views represented in this article are the author’s own.

Turkey, Israel and the Dangerous Vacuum in Post-Assad Syria was originally published on Global Security Review.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 was a seismic event, striking a blow to both Iranian and Russian influence in Syria. While Moscow, despite its war in Ukraine and mounting Western sanctions, remains committed to its military bases, Iran’s position is far more complex. Unlike Russia, whose primary interests are geopolitical and military, Iran sees Syria as an ideological and strategic battleground central to its regional ambitions.

The de facto regime in Damascus faces an uphill battle in asserting control over a fragmented and failing state. Recent upheavals have occurred, with over a thousand, including civilians, killed in Latakia and other coastal cities. These are historical Alawite strongholds, which highlights the government’s fragile grasp on power. These disturbances, fuelled by remnants of Assad’s rule, cannot be subdued through isolated security operations or curfews alone. They expose a deeper dissatisfaction that neither Damascus nor its external backer, Turkey, can easily suppress.

Despite its opposition to a Sunni Islamist regime in Damascus, Iran, as a Shia’ state, retains influence over the Alawite community—the backbone of Assad’s former regime. Tehran cultivated religious and political alliances with the Alawites, ensuring that its ideological footprint in Syria endures, even as the political landscape shifts.

The situation is further inflamed by the transitional constitution, which upholds Syria’s identity as the “Syrian Arab Republic”—denying the existence of non-Arab nationalities and imposing a Muslim president with near-absolute authority and Islamic law as “a main source” of legislation. This exclusionary framework was rejected by Kurds and Druze alike, who view it as a mere continuation of Assad’s rule, now under a Sunni Islamist veneer. The brutal repression that has accompanied the regime’s efforts to enforce this new order, resulting in thousands of civilian and military deaths, only fuels further opposition.

In southern Syria, the Druze, long wary of both Sunni Islamist factions and Iranian hegemony, are positioning themselves to consolidate local autonomy. Under Israel’s umbrella, the Druze are unlikely to align with any single faction, instead leveraging their position for greater self-rule. Meanwhile, Israel maintains a watchful eye on the evolving situation, preserving its military presence in the south of Syria. From Tel Aviv’s perspective, an extremist Sunni regime in Damascus presents a far greater security threat than a Shi’a-dominated government, making Israel’s calculations in Syria more complex than ever.

For Turkey, the evolving situation presents both opportunities and challenges. While Ankara may find common cause with Sunni factions seeking to assert dominance over Syria, it will remain constrained by Iran’s interests. Iran deeply embedded itself in Syria’s military, economic, and political structures, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) playing a pivotal role in shaping the previous regime’s policies. Iran has sacrificed thousands of Quds and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps ground forces and billions of dollars in Syria. Iran made significant efforts to keep Assad in power and no one can imagine that Tehran will simply walk away and abandon its investment.

The Iranian regime followed this strategy before. After eight years of war with Iraq and massive losses, it steadily expanded its influence over Iraq’s Shi’a sector. Even after the fall of Saddam and the rise of ISIS, Iran established military proxies, ensuring that Iraq remained unstable.

Through control over Shi’a political parties, it works to suppress the Kurdistan Regional Government and keep the Sunnis weak. Those with a stake in Syria’s future should expect a similar Iranian strategy, this time through the Alawites. Iran will seek an opportune moment to replicate the strategy and will not allow Turkey, which has invested significantly less in Syria, to reap the political and economic benefits that Syria offers.

Looking forward, Syria’s future will be shaped by the competing interests of regional and global actors, each pursuing their own trajectories. The western part of the country, where the new regime struggles to consolidate power, will remain a flashpoint for unrest. Meanwhile, Kurdish and Druze-controlled territories are likely to maintain relative stability. The Kurdish forces, with their well-organized military and political structures, have effectively consolidated power, establishing governance mechanisms independent of Damascus.

Israel has little incentive to back any radical transformation that could empower hostile factions. What remains undeniable, however, is that the new regime in Damascus lacks the capacity to curb Iran’s entrenched influence. Tehran has invested too much in blood and resources to relinquish its foothold.

In the ever-shifting sands of Syrian politics, Iran remains a force—one that neither Turkey nor the new rulers in Damascus should ignore as its axis of resistance has the potential to reshape itself—as evidenced by the conflict between Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Damascus and Hizballah in Lebanon. Iran’s ally, Russia, continues to maintain bases in the Alawite-controlled region, which leaves the Russians ever a concern.

Loqman Radpey, PhD, is a fellow at the Middle East Forum with over a decade of experience analyzing the international legal and political dimensions of the right to self-determination for peoples and nations, including the case of Kurdistan. He is the author of Towards an Independent Kurdistan: Self-Determination in International Law.

Iran Can Reconfigure Its Foothold in Post-Assad Syria was originally published on Global Security Review.