Is Turkey a threat to Israel?

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Commission for the Evaluation of the Defense Establishment Budget and the Balance of Power released a report addressing the country’s future strategy, military modernization, industrial expansion and defense spending.

The commission, led by Prof. Yaakov Nagel, a retired brigadier general and a former national security advisor to Netanyahu, includes eight other officers, seven of them retired generals and one of whom is another former Netanyahu national security adviser. That the report has a hawkish tone therefore should not come as a surprise.

Israel is still at war with Hamas — and, for that matter, the Houthis of Yemen. But the report underscores that little is stable in the Middle East — today’s friend could be tomorrow’s enemy.

While the report stresses the importance of maintaining the closest possible ties with the U.S., it also asserts that Israel needs to expand its industrial base, because even America might not be a reliable supplier of military equipment if a Democrat succeeds Donald Trump in the White House.

Most importantly, the commission offers a truism about Israel’s future survival: The Jewish state cannot afford to lose even one major war. In that regard — unsurprisingly given its composition — the commission points to Iran as the country’s long-term primary threat.

Yet it identifies an additional threat that has made headlines in Israel. Not only might the new rebel-led Sunni regime in Syria become radicalized, but under Turkish influence, and with Turkish support, it could create a more serious threat on Israel’s northern border than the Assad regime ever was.

As the report states: “One cannot forget the origins of the [Syrian] rebels and their leaders. … Israel could find itself confronting a new threat that would emerge in Syria — one no less serious than its predecessor, that would take the form of an extremist Sunni power that would not accept the existence of Israel. Moreover, because the Sunni rebels will have the power of the state … their threat could be greater [even] than that of Iran. … The problem will intensify if the Syrian regime will in practice become a ‘Turkish’ proxy, as a substantive part of Turkey’s dream to restore its former Ottoman crown. The presence of Turkish emissaries or Turkish forces in Syria could intensify the danger of a direct Turkish-Israeli confrontation.”

The new Syrian regime’s future orientation certainly is a cause for Israeli concern. Indeed, the refusal of its leader, Ahmed al Sharaa, to shake hands with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock because she is a woman hardly indicates that the regime will be a force for moderation. Nevertheless, Israel faced a hostile Sunni Syria from its creation in 1948 until Hafez al-Assad seized the reins of power in 1971. It deterred Damascus at that time and can do so again, especially given a power balance that is now entirely in Jerusalem’s favor.

It is not surprising that the commission should consider the worst-case effects of Turkish influence on the new Syrian regime. Nevertheless, Turkish support need not result in a confrontation, much less an actual conflict with Israel — Israeli media headlines about war with Turkey notwithstanding. The term that the commission employs, “confrontation,” does not mean conflict. The U.S. Marines had a tense “confrontation” with Israeli forces in Lebanon in 1983; the U.S. Navy confronted the Soviets during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In neither case did war break out.

Indeed, Israel and Turkey confronted each other during the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israeli commandos boarded a civilian ship heading towards Gaza and killed eight Turkish citizens. Not only did the two countries not go to war, they actually restored relations after several years.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hostility to Israel has fluctuated with Israel’s relations with Hamas, a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood that Erdogan supports. Once Israel’s war with Hamas comes to an end — perhaps when the Trump administration is fully ensconced in office and the new president pressures the group to release Israeli hostages, as he has promised he would do — Turkish-Israeli relations could once again be on the upswing.

While the Nagel Commission might worry that Israel and Turkey could find themselves on the verge of war, it certainly is not in America’s interest for two of its key allies to edge toward such a conflict. On the contrary, Washington should encourage Ankara to act as a moderating influence on the new Syrian regime. It is not an accident that America helped quell the tensions arising from the Mavi Marmara crisis. And American influence in Turkey is certain to grow once the Trump administration takes office.

Therefore, should Jerusalem and Ankara appear headed on a collision course, Washington should again quickly intervene to ensure that the Nagel Commission’s worst-case scenario does not become reality.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.