Amid rising tensions between Turkey and Israel following a recent Israeli airstrike on a northern Syrian military base, Ankara has adopted a deliberate strategy of holding back any significant retaliation until after Israel’s October general election, multiple senior Turkish and regional officials have confirmed to Middle East Eye. The core reasoning behind this cautious approach is that Turkish leaders have concluded that any strong immediate response would play directly into the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is running a struggling re-election campaign and seeking to rally domestic support by escalating regional tensions.
The targeted site, the Abu al-Duhur military airbase, sits roughly 70 kilometers from the Turkish border. While the strike is widely viewed as a deliberate provocation by Ankara, it did not catch Turkish officials off guard. Israel has justified the attack by claiming Turkey was preparing to deploy air defense systems at the base, a claim Ankara has flatly denied — a denial that has been corroborated by both Syrian and U.S. officials.
“Israel has hit other positions inside Syria before. This one is not particularly unprecedented,” one senior Turkish official explained to MEE. The official added that the Turkish government has already made its stance on Israeli military actions in Syria clear through multiple public communications, noting that Netanyahu is facing deep domestic pressure and is deliberately stoking conflict with Turkey to divert attention from his political woes. “And he is a madman, definitely, for trying that,” the official added.
Many insiders in Ankara expect the upcoming Israeli election will usher in a change in government, bringing to power what they frame as more pragmatic, reasonable political actors. Turkish officials point to open opposition among some Israeli politicians to Netanyahu’s deliberate escalation, including Yair Golan, a former Israeli general and leader of the left-wing Democrats party, who has pushed back against the prime minister’s confrontational approach.
Two factors make the recent strike particularly alarming for Turkish leadership, officials confirm. First, Israel failed to use the established deconfliction hotline between the two governments ahead of the strike, a departure from established protocol that Ankara views as unnecessarily reckless. Second, the strike represents a clear violation of a bilateral understanding reached between the two countries during talks held in Baku last year.
Under that 2025 agreement, mediated to reduce the risk of accidental confrontation between Turkish and Israeli forces operating in Syria, the two sides set the area north of the T4 airbase near Palmyra as a dividing line between their respective security zones of influence. The deal grew out of earlier tensions over the T4 base, where Turkey had planned to establish a drone outpost to conduct counter-Islamic State operations, a move that prompted Israel to bomb the facility before Turkish forces could deploy. Subsequent negotiations resulted in the dividing line agreement, which was crafted to accommodate Israel’s request for an open air corridor through Syria for potential strikes on Iran in the event of a future conflict.
Prior to last week’s strike, talks between the two sides had progressed relatively smoothly, with Israel continuing to oppose the deployment of Turkish air defense and radar systems in Syria but remaining broadly satisfied with the negotiated framework. The latest attack, however, signals that Israel has shifted course, choosing to forcibly oppose any Turkish-armed or Turkish-supported airbase in northern Syria — even in areas located just kilometers from the Turkish border, well within the zone Ankara was expected to control under the 2025 agreement.
Because Turkey has never moved to deploy forces to Abu al-Duhur, Turkish officials view the strike as an unprovoked breach of the previously agreed status quo. As analyst Dünya Başol noted on social media, while the Israeli government has claimed the strike was necessary to reverse a broken status quo, the attack actually upends the arrangement that Israel itself had agreed to in earlier negotiations.
Multiple Turkish officials have told MEE that Ankara no longer views the current Israeli government led by Netanyahu as a rational negotiating partner. At the same time, Turkish leaders have deliberately framed their own restrained response as proof that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the pragmatic, level-headed actor in the confrontation, in contrast to what they cast as Netanyahu’s reckless political opportunism.
This deliberate display of calm was on public display in recent days: even after the strike and repeated insulting remarks from Netanyahu, Erdogan chose not to cut short his annual summer holiday in Marmaris. He was filmed joking with local politicians during his time away, and when he finally addressed the issue publicly on Tuesday, he avoided any direct mention of either Netanyahu or Israel. He argued that “murderous networks” seeking political gain from a failing election campaign did not deserve a direct response, while still reaffirming that Turkey has a clear regional strategy, will not abandon its regional partners, and seeks only to advance lasting peace with no hidden agenda.
Beyond avoiding boosting Netanyahu’s election prospects, there is a second key strategic reason for Turkey’s cautious approach: the shifting dynamic between Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump. Over the past year, relations between the two leaders have deteriorated significantly, as Netanyahu’s maximalist demands on policy toward Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza have repeatedly put Trump at odds with regional realities and key U.S. Arab allies.
Turkey has intentionally aligned its approach with Washington’s current posture, a strategy that has been boosted by the close relationship Ankara has built with U.S. Special Envoy Thomas Barrack. The warm existing rapport between Erdogan and Trump has also paved the way for two recent major diplomatic wins for Turkey that cut directly against Israeli objectives in Syria.
First, after 47 years of listing Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, the U.S. State Department recently removed the designation — a move that came even as Israeli officials continued to label Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa an extremist and militia leader. The State Department also simultaneously revoked the terrorist designation for HTS, al-Sharaa’s former group. Second, despite long-running Israeli efforts to keep Syria fragmented and its central government weak, Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, recently announced that his forces would fully integrate into the Damascus government and dissolve the self-declared autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Syria — another major policy victory for Ankara.
“Turkey is playing a long game in Syria,” a second senior Turkish official told MEE. “Unlike the Israelis, we prioritise a stable, sovereign and prosperous country that would strengthen security and peace across the region.”