Day: March 5, 2025

Israel has escalated both its military operations and diplomatic messaging in Syria over the past two weeks, threatening a collision with Turkey – the patron of the new regime in Damascus – and giving Azerbaijan a chance to mediate.

Tensions rose late last month when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not allow forces from the new Syrian regime to enter territory south of Damascus. This comes on top of Israeli attacks that led to fatalities and ignited anti-Israel demonstrations in Syria.

Then came an extraordinary threat against the regime by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz: Israel would defend Syria’s Druze minority. Also, Reuters has reported that Israel is lobbying Washington to keep Syria weak, including by letting Russia keep its bases there to counter Turkey’s influence.

Israeli news site Ynet’s reports on meetings between Netanyahu’s military secretary and officials in Moscow on that issue confirmed that Jerusalem is trying to keep Russia in Syria to balance Turkey’s influence there.

In the background, Azerbaijan – which has close ties to both Israel and Turkey – has been striving to reconcile the two countries and avoid a clash.

• Why Israel must stop occupying Syria right now
• Israel’s overbearing embrace threatens Syria’s Druze at a critical juncture
• Following Assad’s fall, do Syria’s Druze even want the IDF coming to their aid?

But people familiar with the Azerbaijani government’s thinking say Israel’s goal of limiting Turkey’s influence in Syria, after the Assad regime fell in December, are unrealistic, despite Jerusalem’s support for Syria’s Kurds. Since the regime’s fall, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has reiterated that the international community must protect the Kurdish minority.

The Azerbaijanis, meanwhile, are calling Israel’s alleged attempts to maintain a Russian presence in Syria a lost cause. They say that Russia will not stay, and that if it aims to maintain a foothold, its only negotiating partner will be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Russians, for their part, are admitting that their chances of keeping their military bases in Syria aren’t encouraging.

“If we can reduce the misunderstandings between our strategic ally Turkey and our strategic partner Israel, we will strive to do so,” Rasim Musabeyov, an Azerbaijani lawmaker and a member of the Israel-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Friendship Group, told Haaretz.

But when it comes to supporting the Kurds, the Azerbaijanis’ tone is different. “I’d like to mention that back in the day, Israel helped Turkey arrest Abdullah Ocalan,” Musabeyov says, referring to the leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK. Ocalan was abducted in Kenya in 1999, was convicted and is serving a life sentence.

Netanyahu, who was serving his first term as prime minister in 1999, strongly denied reports that Israel helped in the arrest.

“Now it’s known in Turkey that Israel is actively helping the PKK in its terrorist struggle against the state. This is something that Turkey definitely won’t forgive,” Musabeyov says.

“And if Israel is interested in normalizing relations with Turkey and avoiding a clash, it should forget about the establishment of a Kurdish state that would be a counterweight to Turkey and Iran. This isn’t going to happen, even if the Americans stand behind the initiative. Iran and Turkey will suppress it.”

Russia on the way out

Hikmat Hajiyev, Azebaijan’s foreign policy chief and an assistant to the country’s president, has visited Israel twice in recent months, the first time when Bashar Assad’s regime fell. He met with Sa’ar and President Isaac Herzog.

The second time, about two weeks ago, Hajiyev met with Netanyahu, and a few days later he traveled to Larnaca, Cyprus, where he met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

“Azerbaijan aspires to see relations between Israel and Turkey become systematic,” says Farhad Mammadov, head of the Center for Studies of the South Caucasus and formerly the director of the Center for Strategic Studies under Azerbaijan’s president. “It’s our interest that there not be hostility between our ally and our closest partner.”

Mammadov says the attempt to keep the Russian bases in Syria is a waste of time. “Turkey is limiting Russia’s presence in Syria, and to maintain some sort of presence in the eastern Mediterranean, Moscow has to negotiate with Ankara,” he says.

After President Assad’s fall, Russia reportedly transferred air-defense systems and other weapons from Syria to Libya, but Mammadov believes that Russia’s entire presence in Syria is in danger.

“Russia doesn’t have other bases in the region, and it will have great difficulties maintaining its assets in northern and central Africa without a presence in the Mediterranean,” he says. “I think Turkey will take advantage of the situation to take control of those assets gradually and curb Russia there.

“The Russian bases in Syria are no longer bases but basically hostages. [The Russians] have no escape route to Russia. They used to be able to fly via Syria and Iraq. … Now they’re blocked, and Turkey isn’t allowing the passage of ships and warplanes. They don’t have any options. They’re sitting there and don’t know how to get out.”

The Russians agree with the Azerbaijanis’ assessment. Mikhail Margelov, vice president of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research institute close to the regime, says Moscow’s bases in Syria “won’t last over time, certainly not forever. It’s clear that if Russia wants to develop its presence, including its security presence, in Africa, it has to find alternatives. But I doubt that Russia will be able to keep the bases, or more precisely, to use them effectively.”

The Azerbaijanis say Turkish control in Syria will maintain unity and stability and ultimately be in Israel’s interest, as opposed to strengthening separatism and stoking the civil war that Israeli policy is promoting.

But Israel isn’t relying on Turkey or the new regime. Sa’ar has said Ankara is collaborating with Iran in Tehran’s attempts to smuggle money to revive Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israelis say they received some proof of this last week: the $2.5 million allegedly earmarked for Hezbollah that was seized from an airline passenger arriving in Beirut from Turkey.
Israeli officials are also harshly criticizing Erdogan’s open support of Hamas, and refuse to see him as a moderating influence in the region.

Hysteria and panic

“These are jihadi guys with a fanatical ideology,” an Israeli source says about the new Syrian regime. “Their actions are extreme, their past is black and their present is black. Look at what they’re doing to the Kurds, ” he says, referring to the fighting between Kurdish and pro-Turkish forces in northern Syria. “Now they’re saying they’re wearing suits? Naivete has its limits.”

But Tsameret Levy-Daphny, a Turkey expert at Shalem College in Jerusalem, says “the Israeli understanding of Turkey is flawed. With Syria, it’s acting out of hysteria and panic.”

She says Turkey’s influence in Syria is something too broad for Israel to significantly curtail, and talk of imperialist Turkish tendencies is exaggerated. Israel’s view of Turkey is influenced by Ankara’s “uncompromising position” under Erdogan on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Levy-Daphny says.

But she notes Turkey’s consistent position: recognition of Israel alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state.