The bombs over Abu Duhur: A warning shot at Ankara

The runway at Abu Duhur had been quiet for many years. Old MiG jets were corroding in the Syrian dust in the north of the country – relics of the civil war that ended when Assad fled to Moscow. On 18 August, in the middle of the night, eight Israeli bombs broke this silence. No casualties occurred. Perhaps this was precisely the point. This was not the strike to kill. The strike sent a message, not to Damascus but to Ankara.

Israel’s version was simple. The Turkish delegation visited this base just a day before. “On the verge of breaching the status quo agreed with Israel on security matters,” Netanyahu’s office claimed that Syria allowed Turkish soldiers to establish themselves in Abu Duhur. As time passed, deploying such radar systems became possible, which could deprive Israeli fighter jets of their invisibility in Syrian skies. As for the Syrians, they called this event something completely different. The strikes, according to their Foreign Ministry, are “an unjustified act of aggression” and “a dangerous escalation that threatens security and stability in the region.” It was not a declaration of anger. It was an appeal. Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government tried to show during the last months its preference for peace over conflict, even though the Israeli troops are still in the Syrian lands conquered during the fall of Assad’s regime.

Ankara responded more sharply. Its communications directorate accused Netanyahu of making “untenable allegations in an attempt to legitimize Israel’s unlawful airstrikes.” It claims that Netanyahu wants “to pursue expansionist and destabilizing policies in the region ahead of its own elections.”

Ankara declared that it will “resolutely continue to cooperate with the Syrian Government and never allow the destabilization of Syria.”

But Washington did not remain silent either. The US Ambassador to Turkey and Trump’s special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, used towards Israel the word that is rarely addressed to this country by American officials. The strikes, in his opinion, were the “unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.” Two days later, he told the Jerusalem Post that Turkish soldiers close to the base had no idea about approaching Israeli fighter jets, and “could potentially have been inclined to scramble their own jets in the belief that they themselves were under attack.” Quite clearly, Barrack told something extraordinary: the strike came literally to the edge of the shooting war between two NATO-adjacent air forces. It was caused not by any strategy, but simply by the communications vacuum.

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This vacuum did not appear randomly. It is a product of the rewriting of the regional order right now, and Turkey is the most significant architect of this new order. Ankara supported the rebel coalition that overthrew Assad. Then, it started treating the new Syria as a strategic trophy – a Sunni-led buffer state between Turkey and Israel, which Ankara starts to see with increasing suspicion as an expansionist neighbor. This suspicion works reciprocally too. Naftali Bennett has already called Turkey “the new Iran.”

Netanyahu accused Erdoğan of having “aggressive aspirations” and of trying to “restore the Ottoman Empire.” Erdoğan, on his side, warned that the Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon “threaten Turkey,” and the Israeli “aggression” threatens “the whole world” and “must be stopped.”

Finally, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Netanyahu of “trying to portray Turkey as Israel’s next enemy while pursuing his expansionist policies.”

These are not the recycled Erdoğan-Netanyahu Twitter fight of the last decade. Some structural change happened. Now, Turkey has NATO’s second-largest army, a defense-industrial complex capable of massive production of the drones revolutionizing modern warfare from Karabakh to Libya, and the increasing willingness to become guarantor of the new Syrian state. Washington, in its turn, tends to lift the sanctions blocking Turkey from the F-35 program since 2020. Trump defended the potential sale bluntly: “Nobody tells me what we should be selling,” he told reporters. “Turkey is a tremendous ally.” Netanyahu warned the sale would “destroy” the balance of power in the Middle East, which is “ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority.” The Turkish F-35s flying in the skies above Idlib, patrolling the airspace now freely crossed by the Israeli jets, will destroy this guarantee forever – though Washington warns that Ankara still does not meet the legal requirements for the realization of the deal.

READ: Israeli opposition leader calls Syria attack ‘provocative and dangerous’, warns Israel will ‘pay the price’

In this context, coalitions are forming. At the beginning of this month, Turkey joined Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in signing the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement that addresses any armed attacks against any of the three states. “It is a pact aimed at Israel,” one senior Israeli official told Ynet. Israel responds in kind, trying to court Greece and Cyprus – states having a long-standing history of conflicts with Ankara – and hosting the Greek military chief of staff.

So, does the Abu Duhur strike presage the prolonged confrontation between Turkey and Israel, to be waged by the proxies in the Syrian skies? The honest answer is: yes, but not deliberately yet. Erdoğan and Netanyahu do not want a war directly, and neither can fully control it.

But both are engaged in domestic politics, rewarding them with escalatory rhetoric even though they do not want it operationally – Netanyahu ahead of the October election, Erdoğan surfing the wave of regional assertiveness built up for the last twenty years. The problem is not in the intentions. It is in the architecture: two air forces with no deconfliction channel operating in the same sky of Idlib, each sure the other is an aggressor.

Barrack understands this perfectly well. He says the talks are underway quietly to launch a formal deconfliction mechanism between Israel and Syria, involving Turkey not as a bystander, but as the direct participant. Whether this mechanism appears before the next unmarked jet crosses Idlib airspace will determine whether the Abu Duhur strike is remembered as an isolated incident or the beginning of a much longer battle for new Middle Eastern rules.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.