I argued in these pages that the Türkiye-Israel rivalry had stopped being conjunctural and was becoming structural, driven not simply by the Gaza war but by the reordering of the Levant after Assad. The developments of the past several weeks require a further step in that argument. What is consolidating is not merely a structural rivalry between two regional powers. It is a pattern of Israeli behavior that increasingly presents Türkiye with a direct security challenge. The distinction matters. Rivalry invites management but threat perception produces military planning, balancing and countermeasures.
Let's start with how Israel now reads Türkiye, since that reading explains much of what follows. The emerging Israeli assessment does not rest primarily on Turkish intentions. It rests on Turkish capacity. Ankara’s position on Palestine irritates Israeli officials, but irritation does not produce long-term defense planning. What produces defense planning is a neighboring state with one of NATO’s largest standing armies, an indigenous defense industry that has moved from tactical drones to long-range strike capabilities, layered air defense and a fifth-generation aircraft program, and the political capital to convert military capability into regional influence.
Israel looks at capability and asks what it could do, not merely what it intends to do today. Measured this way, Türkiye is the only regional actor in the Eastern Mediterranean that combines military scale, an increasingly autonomous defense industry, strategic depth and the political ability to project influence across several theaters simultaneously. That assessment is, in its own terms, rational. It is also why diplomatic messaging alone cannot reverse a threat perception rooted primarily in material capability.
The second observation receives too little attention in Turkish debate. This framing is not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal project. In February, at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared that Türkiye was becoming “the new Iran.” He accused President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of seeking to encircle Israel and of trying to draw Saudi Arabia into a hostile Sunni alignment involving nuclear-armed Pakistan. He later warned that, after confronting Iran, Israel would not remain passive in the face of Türkiye’s rise.
More important than any individual politician is the institutional layer beneath them. The Nagel Committee, commissioned by the Israeli government to review the defense budget and long-term force structure, submitted its report in January 2025. The committee explicitly warned that Turkish influence in Syria could increase the risk of a direct Turkish-Israeli confrontation. It argued that a Syrian military structure aligned with Ankara could eventually develop into a challenge more dangerous than the Iranian threat.
The report recommended a substantial increase in net defense expenditure over the following decade, alongside major investments in air power, long-range operations, intelligence, satellites, ammunition stocks and military autonomy. These force-building recommendations were not designed exclusively around Türkiye. Nevertheless, the Turkish scenario had clearly entered the threat environment used to justify Israel’s future military posture.
The available evidence therefore suggests that the assessment is moving beyond political rhetoric and entering Israel’s broader force-planning culture. That migration is the decisive development. Once a threat perception acquires institutional form, it no longer depends entirely on who governs. Netanyahu may leave office, but the assessment can remain embedded in procurement programs, force structure, intelligence priorities and contingency plans that outlast any cabinet.
Doctrine has already begun to produce behavior, and the most visible evidence is in Syria. Israel maintains nine military positions inside southern Syrian territory, including on the Syrian side of Mount Hermon. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has publicly stated that Israeli forces will not withdraw from Mount Hermon or the buffer zone while Israel believes threats remain. Israel also demands the demilitarization of southern Syria, including Quneitra, Daraa and Suwayda.
Israel has repeatedly intervened in the Suwayda crisis, striking Syrian government forces and acting in ways that strengthen the trajectory toward Druze autonomy. Regardless of Israel’s declared intention to protect the Druze, the practical effect is to deepen Syria’s fragmentation and obstruct the restoration of central authority.
In August, Israel conducted eight strikes against the Abu al-Duhur airfield in Idlib. It justified the operation by claiming that a potential Turkish deployment would violate the security status quo Israel seeks to impose in Syria. Ankara and Damascus denied that a permanent Turkish base was being established. The underlying Israeli message was nevertheless clear: Israel claims a veto over which military forces a sovereign Syria may host and how the country may rebuild its defense capacity.
When U.S. Envoy Tom Barrack proposed a deconfliction mechanism among Israel, Türkiye and Syria, Israel reportedly resisted the initiative. The likely reason is that a formal mechanism would recognize Türkiye as a legitimate security actor in Syria, while Israel’s current approach seeks to limit, rather than merely manage, that role. This is strategically significant. A state that systematically obstructs the consolidation of Türkiye’s most important neighbor is no longer merely competing with Turkish foreign policy. It is acting against a central component of Turkish national security.
The third element is the Aegean, where Israeli strategy becomes more sophisticated. Israel cannot balance Türkiye in the Eastern Mediterranean alone. Its own strategic mass is insufficient, its diplomatic position remains constrained, and Washington’s Syria policy runs partly through Ankara. It therefore needs a partner whose geography can provide what Israel’s own cannot.
The Achilles Shield agreement signed with Greece in Tel Aviv on Aug. 31 is worth approximately 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion). It is Israel’s largest defense agreement with Greece and one of the largest export contracts in the history of its defense industry. The agreement is not simply a hardware transfer. It will construct an integrated national air and missile defense architecture combining David’s Sling, SPYDER and Barak MX systems, ELTA multi-mission radars and a national command-and-control network. It also builds upon expanding Israeli cooperation with Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration in air defense, counter-drone operations, cyber capabilities and military exercises.
The air defense dimension has received the greatest attention. The intelligence implications may ultimately prove more consequential. Whatever its declared defensive purpose, a network of long-range radars and integrated command systems along Türkiye’s western approaches could provide persistent visibility over Turkish air activity, electronic signatures and force movements. Israel is not only selling weapons to Greece. It is positioning Israeli technology inside a strategic geography from which Turkish military activity can be observed more continuously.
That Athens has accepted this architecture against the background of its disputes with another NATO member deserves particular attention in Ankara. Greece has calculated that Israeli technology can arrive faster and with fewer political conditions than many European alternatives, and that strategic alignment with Israel converts Greek geography into diplomatic weight. What Athens may not have fully priced is that procurement is not protection. The agreement contains no mutual-defense guarantee. In a real crisis, Greece could discover that it had bought systems, not a guarantor.
Put these elements together and apply an ordinary security assessment: a neighboring state increasingly defines Türkiye as its principal emerging adversary, incorporates the Turkish scenario into long-term defense planning, acts militarily to prevent the stabilization of Türkiye’s most important neighbor, builds a balancing partnership on Türkiye’s western flank and deploys systems that could expand intelligence visibility over Turkish military activity. This can no longer be adequately described as rivalry alone. It is an emerging security threat and should be assessed as such.
Ankara does not use this language publicly, and there are understandable reasons for that restraint. Public threat designation would narrow diplomatic space, accelerate mutual securitization and potentially validate the most alarmist voices in Israel. Strategic restraint, however, should not be confused with strategic ambiguity inside the Turkish system.
The harder question is what follows. Diplomatic rapprochement alone is no longer sufficient because Israel’s concern is rooted in Turkish capability rather than rhetoric. More importantly, Israel’s ongoing irrationality concerning Gaza and the Palestinian issue does not provide room for diplomacy for Türkiye. Yet diplomacy remains necessary to prevent capability-based competition from producing an unintended war. Barrack’s deconfliction initiative has value while the current U.S. administration remains willing to invest political capital in it, but its durability beyond this presidency cannot be assumed.
Regional balancing through Riyadh, Islamabad, Cairo and the Gulf offers a more promising long-term track. The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement concluded by Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan points in this direction, although its deterrent credibility and operational mechanisms remain untested. The agreement should not be reduced to an anti-Israel alliance. Its deeper significance lies in producing a regionally owned security framework that limits the ability of any single actor to impose a new order through military superiority.
Military balancing is already underway and remains the instrument most directly under Turkish control. Direct conflict is conceivable and would be ruinous, which is precisely why credible deterrence must be built before it is needed. Deterrence in this context does not mean preparing for an inevitable war. It means convincing Israel that attempts to exclude Türkiye from Syria, fragment the country or construct a containment architecture around Turkish geography will generate costs exceeding their expected benefits.
What Ankara has not done is retreat, and this is the most instructive signal of the past month. Days after the Idlib strikes, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar was in Damascus offering the Turkish Petroleum Corporation’s seismic and drilling capacity and signing a memorandum on phosphate cooperation. Trade Minister Ömer Bolat subsequently traveled to Damascus with a large business delegation before continuing to Aleppo. The two countries are discussing infrastructure, industrial zones, border crossings and a bilateral trade target of $10 billion (TL 486.40 billion).
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has now visited Damascus to activate the Joint Higher Committee and deepen political, economic and institutional cooperation. Ankara and Damascus are also advancing an energy agenda covering natural gas, electricity infrastructure and grid interconnection. Erdoğan is expected to visit Syria as the relationship moves toward a more comprehensive strategic framework.
Israel bombed to demonstrate that Türkiye’s presence in Syria carries a cost. Türkiye answered by deepening that presence through infrastructure, energy, trade and institutions rather than declarations.
That contrast defines the emerging trajectory. Israel is accumulating instruments of denial across an arc running from the Golan Heights to the Aegean, while Türkiye is accumulating relationships and institutional arrangements that other states acquire an interest in preserving. Denial is faster. Construction is more durable.
The Aegean will increasingly be influenced by the strategic logic of the Levant rather than governed solely through the traditional bilateral grammar of continental shelves, territorial waters and airspace. Greece risks becoming a forward position rather than a broker in a wider regional competition. The Eastern Mediterranean, meanwhile, is being reorganized around two competing approaches to regional order: one based on military denial and strategic fragmentation, the other on connectivity, state consolidation and regional ownership.
