🇸🇾🛣 Syria: The Fight Over a Land Bridge

Israel has told the Trump administration that the Abu al-Duhur strike was intended to deter a Turkish military buildup in Syria. U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios that Israel remains concerned Turkey could deploy advanced weapons systems and forces at Syrian bases. The willingness to strike is no longer hypothetical.

At least eight bombs hit Abu al-Duhur’s runways and several hangars. The airfield had been visited by a Turkish delegation reviewing rehabilitation work a day earlier. Syrian officials said the strikes caused damage but no casualties.

Then Damascus gave Israel a second reason to look at the base.

Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Syria is considering whether to join the Mecca Pact, a defense agreement involving Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Damascus has not made a decision, he said, but described Turkey as a key partner in Syria’s reconstruction.

Turkey says it had no military delegation at Abu al-Duhur when Israel struck. Syria says it has no plan for a Turkish military base there. Israel says it acted to prevent one. The formal positions have barely moved since the runway was hit.

The Israeli argument is broader than one airfield. Turkish air-defense systems in Syria could constrain Israeli operations along the routes to Iran. Turkey could also support Syrian units tied to Turkish military intelligence near Israel’s border. In this view, rebuilding Syria’s armed forces is not neutral reconstruction. It could create a new Sunni military axis on Israel’s northern frontier.

That argument depends on treating Syria less as a sovereign state rebuilding its own military than as a corridor through which other governments extend their reach.

A retired Turkish special-forces commander, Zekai Aksakalli, gave the flavor of the Turkish response. He said Israel could not match Turkey’s capabilities. He recalled beginning his military career with little more than a rifle and old binoculars, then pointed to how far Turkey’s defense industry has advanced since then.

Reported Turkish artillery and vehicle movements in northern Syria do not, by themselves, threaten Israeli aircraft. They may indicate preparations for ground operations. But the concern in Jerusalem is what could follow: Turkish systems, Turkish training, Syrian units, and a military structure that could outlast the current crisis.

#Syria #Turkey #Israel #AbuAlDuhur #Erdogan #Damascus #MeccaPact #Pakistan #SaudiArabia #MiddleEast

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🔴⚖️ Red Notice Diplomacy

Turkey has asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice for Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. The request follows arrest warrants issued in July by Istanbul’s 11th High Criminal Court over Israel’s interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud flotilla in international waters.

Turkish prosecutors accuse the defendants of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, unlawful detention, property damage, aggravated robbery, and hijacking. The proceedings are taking place in absentia.

A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant. It is a request circulated through Interpol asking national authorities to locate and provisionally arrest someone pending extradition or another legal process. Whether to act on it remains a decision for each country.

That distinction matters. Ankara has launched a legal process with international reach. It has not acquired the power to put Netanyahu in handcuffs outside Turkey.

Netanyahu’s office called Erdogan an “antisemitic dictator,” accused him of harboring Hamas, and said Turkey was trying to extend its aggression against Israel into Syria. Ankara says it is pursuing accountability for crimes committed against civilians. Jerusalem says the request is an attempt to intimidate Israeli leaders and soldiers.

The proposed Israeli response followed the same script: seek a Red Notice for Erdogan over Turkey’s support for Hamas and its alleged role in encouraging attacks on Israelis.

Interpol is meant to help police locate fugitives. Turkey and Israel are using it to announce that the other belongs in custody.

Neither leader is booking a flight to appear in the other’s court.

#Turkey #Israel #Netanyahu #Erdogan #Interpol #RedNotice #Gaza #InternationalLaw #MiddleEast

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🇸🇾✈️ An Airfield Nobody Agrees On

Israel’s strike on Abu al-Duhur air base has produced a rare public clash between Israel’s defense minister and the Trump administration’s envoy for Syria.

Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, said the intelligence Israel presented before the strike did not hold up. Israel raised concerns about possible Turkish movement at the base about six days earlier, he said. U.S. intelligence agencies checked and found that no such movement was taking place.

Barrack outlined other possibilities. Israel may have detected a threat no one else saw. Or it may have learned of a future Turkish plan to expand training at the site and treated it as a deployment already under way. He also raised a darker possibility: Israel may have been trying to provoke a Turkish response during an election period.

The Turkish military, Barrack said, could have scrambled its own aircraft after seeing Israeli planes approaching without knowing their target or purpose. Cooler heads in Ankara kept it from escalating.

Regional stability, apparently, depended on who in Turkey took the first phone call.

Barrack also disclosed that Turkey, Israel, and Syria coordinate every evening against ISIS. “As long as there is a vacuum,” he said, “ISIS is very aggressively trying to reconstitute itself.” The three governments coordinate against ISIS at night and publicly accuse one another of preparing for war by day.

He then said Israel still occupies the Golan Heights in violation of U.N. resolutions and international law. That position tracks the international legal consensus and U.N. Security Council Resolution 497, but it contradicts Trump’s 2019 recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the territory.

Israel’s response arrived on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, when the defense minister’s office does not usually issue lengthy political statements.

Israel Katz said the IDF had repeatedly recommended a strike based on “clear intelligence” about Turkish intentions at Abu al-Duhur. Israel, he said, warned Syria through senior channels, shared the information with U.S. officials, and struck only after Damascus failed to respond.

“Erdogan was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was forced to back down,” Katz said. He called Barrack’s comments inaccurate and said they contradicted Trump’s position on the Golan.

Much of Katz’s statement was aimed at home. He accused Israel’s opposition and parts of the media of portraying the operation as political out of ignorance, a failure to understand Israel’s security interests, and a reflexive urge to attack the government.

Turkey’s presidency supplied the reverse accusation, calling Israeli statements cheap election tactics by a government trying to escape responsibility for war crimes.

The dispute over Abu al-Duhur now has three versions: Israel says it stopped a Turkish deployment; Washington says the intelligence was wrong; Turkey says there was nothing there to stop.

#Syria #Israel #Turkey #AbuAlDuhur #TomBarrack #IsraelKatz #Erdogan #GolanHeights #MiddleEast

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🇹🇷 The Sultan, the Territory, and the Party

A senior Israeli intelligence official is warning that unless Israel sets clear red lines in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean, Turkish forces will keep moving closer. The forecast is cinematic: Turkish tanks on the Golan Heights, Turkish warships off Caesarea.

The immediate dispute is less theatrical but more concrete. Israel struck Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18, saying Turkish forces were preparing to deploy there. Damascus says Turkish officers had visited for training and military cooperation, not to establish a base. Turkey calls Israel’s allegations baseless.

There are quiet contacts as well. The United States is trying to build a deconfliction mechanism among Israel, Turkey, and Syria after U.S. envoy Tom Barrack called the Israeli strike an “unnecessary escalation.”

Washington is not arranging a peace treaty. It is trying to prevent three armies from discovering each other’s red lines by accident.

Defense Minister Israel Katz had a different priority — answering his critics.

After the strike, Katz attacked opposition figures, analysts, and event hosts who, in his view, barely qualify as journalists. He said they first called the attack unnecessary and political, then objected to Israel’s public warnings to Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Katz mocked the idea that Erdogan should not be angered, asking whether Israel had merely gone for an evening stroll “with a gentle breeze in the treetops.”

Afterward, Katz and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir attended the birthday celebration of Channel 14 military correspondent Hillel Biton Rosen. The ministers were warning of Turkish armor in Syria while helping celebrate a television reporter. Governments can conduct deterrence policy and influencer relations before dessert.

Turkey’s record suggests that its deployments do not end with a press release.

In Libya, Ankara intervened in 2019 as Khalifa Haftar’s forces closed in on Tripoli. Turkish drones, military advisers, and Syrian fighters helped stop the offensive and preserve the UN-recognized Government of National Accord. Turkey then secured a maritime-boundary agreement with Tripoli that expanded its claims in the eastern Mediterranean and challenged Greek and Cypriot positions.

In Syria, Turkey has built a deep military footprint since 2016, first under the banner of fighting Islamic State and later through operations directed at Kurdish forces. Ankara controls or influences broad areas of northern Syria through bases, allied armed groups, infrastructure, and economic ties. The Sharaa government is trying to present itself as an independent authority, even as Turkish military cooperation deepens.

Israel has the stronger air force: stealth aircraft, precision weapons, and intelligence. Turkey has greater naval mass and an established capacity to project power across the eastern Mediterranean. These advantages do not offset each other. They become dangerous when each side believes the other is operating on its turf.

#Turkey #Israel #Syria #Erdogan #Katz #Mediterranean #Golan #Libya

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🇯🇴 A Security Deal in Jordan, With an American Chaperone

On Sunday, August 23, Syria confirmed that Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, accompanied by the heads of General Intelligence and Military Intelligence, met with a senior Israeli delegation in Jordan under U.S. mediation. AFP reported that Israel sent Mossad chief Roman Gofman. The staffing made the format clear: a diplomatic meeting built around intelligence chiefs.

Damascus wants “practical mechanisms” to stop Israeli strikes, arrests, and targeted killings on Syrian territory. It also wants to revive talks on a security agreement that could lead to something broader. Syria is sitting across from Israel to ask it to stop attacking Syria.

Damascus insists it has the right to rebuild its military and choose its partnerships. Israel’s reported conditions run in the opposite direction: no Turkish military activity in Syria; a demilitarized Syrian side of the Golan; protection for Syria’s Druze community; and limits on the Syrian army’s acquisition of certain strategic weapons. Israel has also reportedly conditioned any withdrawal from territory it seized after Assad’s fall on diplomatic progress.

This is not a failure to draft an agreement. Shaibani said the sides had already agreed “on paper to almost everything” early this year, including security zones near the border, a buffer zone limited to UN forces, and varying levels of Syrian deployment elsewhere. His concern was not the text. It was whether Israel intended to carry it out.

On territory, Syria was careful with its wording. It called the Golan occupied Syrian land, but said its final status was premature for discussion. Its immediate demand was for Israeli troops to withdraw to the lines held before December 8, 2024, and for the 1974 Disengagement Agreement to be fully implemented.

That agreement did not simply collapse. After Assad fell, Israel declared it void, moved into the UN-patrolled buffer zone, and expanded its presence beyond the Golan. Damascus is asking Israel to reverse a decision Israel made unilaterally.

The meeting also addressed Turkey. Syria wants to prevent Israeli-Turkish tensions from spilling onto Syrian territory — in other words, not to become the place where two other states settle their security disputes.

Washington is not trying to manufacture trust. It is trying to keep a nearly finished deal alive while both parties argue over whether the other one means it.

#Syria #Israel #Jordan #USA #SecurityDeal #Golan #Turkey #MiddleEast

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The Mediator Joins the Fight

Tom Barrack has two jobs that now pull in opposite directions. He is Washington’s ambassador to Turkey and its envoy for Syria and Iraq. A mediator is supposed to keep both sides talking. Barrack chose a podcast and picked a side.

After Israel struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northern Syria, Barrack said Israel may have been “trying to bait Turkey.” He also said the United States found no evidence that Turkey planned a military move at the site.

Israel says it warned the Syrian government and shared intelligence with authorized U.S. officials before approving the strike.

Defense Minister Israel Katz answered during Shabbat, an unusual move for a routine diplomatic quarrel. He called Barrack’s comments “full of inaccuracies” and said the envoy contradicted Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Barrack also insisted that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not seek an adversarial relationship with Israel. Ankara was simultaneously pursuing an Interpol notice against Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials on genocide allegations.

That does not make Israel’s intelligence correct. It does make Barrack’s sales pitch harder in Jerusalem.

A mediator may challenge Israeli claims. But he cannot publicly write Turkey’s defense brief, dismiss Israel’s threat assessment and then ask Israel to trust him with its border arrangements.

Washington gave Barrack a bridge job. He appears to have rented it to Ankara.

#Israel #Turkey #Syria #US

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Manzikert, Inc.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan marked the 955th anniversary of Manzikert by turning medieval conquest into a regional business plan. He said the road to Manzikert began in Ahlat, and that the “conquest of Jerusalem and Istanbul” grew from the faith forged there.

Then came the corporate disclosure. “If everyone has a calculation, we also have a calculation and a plan,” Erdoğan said. “Allah … also has a plan, and that plan will ultimately prevail.” He promised defeat for “blood merchants” and “genocidaires.”

Hours later, Erdoğan said Turkey has “no hidden agenda” in the region. Its only goals, he said, are peace, justice, stability and security. Ankara also insists no outside power can draw the limits of Turkish foreign policy.

Those statements can coexist. Every expansion project needs a peace department. The Ottoman revival pitch comes with a nonrefundable stability guarantee.

The timing matters because Israel says Turkey planned activity at Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase. Israel says the site matters for flight routes near Idlib. Turkey denies hidden motives. Erdoğan says Turkey has a plan. The only question is whether the plan comes with a map.

One foot in Syria. A place at the Gaza table. A sermon about Jerusalem. But no agenda. Just peace, dressed for a 1071 anniversary.

The claim that U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack was recalled to Washington comes from Laura Loomer and remains unconfirmed. The State Department has made no public announcement.

#Turkey #Erdogan #Syria #Israel

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The Haifa Bypass

Lebanon and Syria have restarted work on a railway link from Tripoli’s port to the Syrian border, then onward through Homs. Their transport ministers met in Damascus, created a joint technical team and agreed to update studies for the corridor.

Lebanon is already assessing the rehabilitation of roughly 40 kilometers of track between Tripoli and the border.

Forty kilometers of abandoned rail is the easy part. The political map behind it is larger. Syria and Saudi Arabia signed rail and logistics agreements this week.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have already agreed to study a rail connection through Syria and Jordan. Ankara wants its network connected to Aleppo. Riyadh wants the Gulf connected to Turkey and Europe.

The route makes sense on paper. Gulf cargo moves north through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, then toward Turkey or the Mediterranean.

Tripoli wants a seat at that table. Syria wants to become a transit state again. Turkey wants a land bridge. Saudi Arabia wants alternatives to the Red Sea and Hormuz.

Israel has its own map. IMEC is supposed to link India, the Gulf, Jordan and the port of Haifa before continuing to Europe.
But IMEC remains in feasibility work, with no firm construction schedule or committed funding for its most sensitive land section.

The Lebanon-Syria line is not built. Funding is unresolved. Syria still has about 1,052 kilometers of operational railway from a network of 2,552 kilometers, much of it damaged or limited by years of war. The ministers have created a committee, not a corridor.

Still, routes are political statements before they become infrastructure. This one says the region wants options that do not require a stop in Haifa.

#Lebanon #Syria #Turkey #IMEC

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🪖☪️Mecca’s New Defense Brand

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan held the first meeting of their new security committee in Istanbul. Foreign ministers, defense ministers and military chiefs attended. Hakan Fidan announced the formal name: the Mecca Defense Alliance.

Fidan said the pact is defensive, not directed at any country and does not replace Turkey’s NATO obligations. He also said it is open to regional states that support “peace and stability.” Egypt may join, he said, but Ankara is still drafting entry conditions and procedures.

The structure is already becoming real. Pakistan will provide the alliance’s first secretary-general for three years. The permanent secretariat will be based in Saudi Arabia. The members plan joint exercises, defense-industry cooperation, technology development and joint production. “Not directed against anyone” is how every new alliance introduces itself before it starts ordering maps.

Then Fidan supplied the target that does not officially exist. He called Benjamin Netanyahu a threat to “global security” and linked harsher Israeli rhetoric toward Turkey to Israel’s coming election. Ankara says Mecca targets nobody. Its foreign minister then spent the press conference describing one man as a danger to humanity.

The pact’s Article 5-style pledge says an attack on one signatory will be treated as an attack on all. It was signed against the backdrop of the Iran war, attacks in the Gulf, and rising tension between Israel and Turkey in Syria. Saudi Arabia brings money and religious legitimacy. Pakistan brings a nuclear deterrent. Turkey brings NATO membership, an army and the regional sales team.

The alliance says it will reduce uncertainty. It has already added one certainty. The Middle East is building another security structure without waiting for Washington’s approval.

#Turkey #SaudiArabia #Pakistan #MeccaAlliance

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Achilles Gets a Shield

Israel and Greece signed a €3 billion defense contract to build “Achilles Shield,” Greece’s first integrated, multilayered national air-defense network.

The deal is Israel’s largest defense export agreement with Greece and among the largest in Israel’s history.

The package combines Rafael’s David’s Sling and SPYDER systems with Israel Aerospace Industries’ Barak MX.

It also includes ELTA air-surveillance radars and a national command-and-control system that will link the layers.

Greece separately bought Rafael’s Drone Dome counter-drone systems for €26 million.

The system is designed to counter ballistic and cruise missiles, aircraft, drones and guided munitions.

Deliveries will come in stages, with full operational readiness expected within 35 months.

Athens is paying for a national air-defense architecture based entirely on Israeli systems and Israeli combat experience.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said the deal responds to actors seeking “hegemonic ambitions” and regional instability. He did not name Turkey.

He did not need to. Ankara has built a new Mecca Defense Alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Greece has responded by buying a three-billion-euro Israeli air-defense stack.

This is not a Greek-Israeli alliance against Turkey in legal terms. It is a procurement contract. But regional politics often arrive inside the equipment catalogue.

Turkey sells itself as a new security provider. Greece just bought the receipts.

#Israel #Greece #Turkey #AirDefense

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Turkey’s Gaza Classroom

More than 300 Palestinian boys and girls received certificates and prizes in Deir al-Balah after memorizing the Quran. The organizer was the Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi Foundation, a Turkish Islamic charity that says more than 10,000 students take part in its education and aid programs across Gaza.

The foundation bears the name of Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi, a Sufi sheikh, poet and spiritual adviser to Ottoman sultans. That heritage is not a random branding choice. Erdoğan’s Turkey has spent years rebuilding influence through Ottoman memory, religious networks, charitable work and the language of Muslim guardianship.

A certificate ceremony is softer than a military base. It is also more durable. Soldiers leave when the war map changes.

A child who spends years inside a foreign-funded religious education network carries its worldview into the next generation.

Turkey calls this humanitarian work. Israel calls it a security problem. Hamas sees an ally’s infrastructure.

All three are correct. Gaza is being rebuilt by competing patrons before it is rebuilt for Gazans.

The weapons arrive with a serial number. Influence arrives with a prize, a certificate and a child reciting from memory.

#Gaza #Turkey #Erdogan #PoliticalIslam

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The Regional IQ Contest

Turkey and Israel are building rival power projects across the Middle East. One country spent 2025 lifting its school scores. The other treated its own education system like a coalition agreement: postpone the problem, fight over the budget, blame the previous government.

Turkey scored 494 in science, 472 in reading and 462 in mathematics in PISA 2025. It beat the OECD average in science and reading. It effectively matched it in mathematics. Since 2022, Turkish results rose by 18 points in science, 16 in reading and nine in math. Turkey recorded the largest gains among OECD members in all three subjects.

Israel went in the opposite direction. Its students scored 442 in science, 433 in mathematics and 436 in reading. Since 2022, reading fell 38 points. Math fell 25. Science fell 23. Almost 29% of Israeli students failed to reach basic proficiency in all three fields at once. The OECD average is 19.7%.

This is not a story about an underperforming fringe. The sharpest declines appeared among Hebrew-speaking students in the state system. The alleged “core” of Start-Up Nation is now handing in an exam paper with the answers missing.

Turkey’s governing party speaks about national greatness and builds a larger pool of students who can read a technical manual. Israel’s governing coalition speaks about national greatness and fights over who appoints the next land official, media regulator and rabbi.

Wars are won by soldiers. Regional power is built by engineers, technicians, doctors and people who can calculate without a coalition whip.

Israel’s political class keeps selling strategic superiority. PISA just checked the inventory.

#Israel #Turkey #Education #PISA

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Diversification, Russian Edition

Turkey says it is diversifying fertilizer supplies. Ankara signed a memorandum with Russia to secure mineral fertilizers and raw materials.

The deal comes as access to urea and other inputs from Gulf producers has become harder. Diversification now means finding a second way to buy Russian molecules.

Agriculture Minister Ibrahim Yumaklı said the agreement would protect Turkish farmers from disruptions caused by wars and regional conflict.

Russian fertilizer exports to Turkey had already risen by more than 90% in 2025. Agricultural trade between the two countries grew nearly 30% in the first seven months of 2026.

Russia sells Turkey energy. Russia sells Turkey fertilizer. Russian tourists fill Turkish hotels. Rosatom is building the Akkuyu nuclear plant on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

Erdoğan calls the relationship historic. Moscow calls it business. Both descriptions are accurate enough to frighten anyone who hears “strategic autonomy” in Ankara.

Turkey is a NATO member. It buys air-defense systems from Russia. It mediates between Moscow and Kyiv. Now it turns to Russia for fertilizer because Gulf supply routes are under pressure.

Ankara has found a uniquely Turkish definition of independence: never depend on only one Russian supply chain.

#Turkey #Russia #Fertilizer #Akkuyu

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Erdogan’s Grand Strategy Needs Small Hands

Turkey speaks like a regional empire. DİSK says 6.7 million children live in poverty, about one in three children nationwide.

Arzu Çerkezoğlu, president of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey, said 15 percent of children work.

Employment among 14-to-17-year-olds has risen 70 percent, while enrollment in that age group has fallen by 8.1 percentage points.

MESEM is the Education Ministry’s vocational education program. DİSK says its enrollment has grown more than fivefold over the past decade.

The program sends students into workplaces under the name of training, while employers receive labor with fewer rights and lower costs.

DİSK recorded 93,517 children injured in workplace accidents over the past nine years. At least 546 children died at work. That is eighteen classrooms.

Erdogan’s government sells national grandeur abroad. At home, poverty pushes children into factories, workshops, farms and other workplaces.

Employers call it training. Empires need soldiers. This one is hiring children.

#Turkey #Erdogan #ChildLabor #MESEM

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Turkey’s Ten-Million-Drone Peace Message

Turkey says it has no hostility toward Israelis. Its military chief says the country will produce 5 million drones within five years and 10 million within a decade. Ankara’s peace vocabulary now comes with industrial output targets.

The dispute began after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz posted a video titled “My Clear Message to Dictator Erdogan.”

Turkey’s communications director, Burhanettin Duran, called Katz’s language “undignified and inappropriate” and said it would not obscure what Ankara describes as Israel’s record in Gaza.

Erdogan gave the diplomatic version in an interview with Newsweek. He said Israel was promoting a “misguided narrative” that portrayed Turkey as a new threat, tied the rhetoric to Israel’s domestic politics and election climate, and said Turkey held no hostility toward “the Israeli people or toward any other society.”

Ankara’s problem, he said, was with policies it considers unlawful and destabilizing.

At the Denizkurdu-I/2026 naval exercise, Turkey tested joint operations combining crewed platforms with unmanned and autonomous systems in the air, on the surface and underwater.

The drills ran across the Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.

This is not a fleet plan. It is a national industrial doctrine measured in machines that can observe, jam, strike and swarm.

Ankara calls it self-reliance. Israel hears a neighbor building a military production line on continental scale.

Erdogan says Turkey has no hostility toward Israelis. Katz calls him a dictator. Turkey’s navy tests unmanned warfare across three seas.

The general staff gives the region a production target large enough to make every crisis look like a sales forecast.

#Turkey #Israel #Erdogan #Drones

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Turkey’s Export Model: Turn Allies Into Fronts

Azerbaijan has already shown where its priorities sit when Israel’s interests collide with Turkey’s.

When Israel’s government decided to recognize the Armenian genocide in June, Baku condemned the decision as a “distortion of historical facts,” demanded that Jerusalem reverse it and adopted Ankara’s line almost word for word.

The country Israel treated as a strategic partner chose Turkey’s national myth over Israel’s political decision.

For years, Israeli diplomats had cited Azerbaijan’s sensitivities as a reason to avoid recognition. Then Jerusalem signaled it was ready to cross that line, and Baku did not merely complain.

It reportedly pushed to curb further Knesset action, proving that the Turkish veto can now travel through Israeli-Azerbaijani relations without Turkish diplomats entering the room.

Israel knows this story. Before 1979, Iran was one of Israel’s closest regional partners: intelligence cooperation, arms ties, oil and a shared interest in containing Arab nationalist states. The Islamic Revolution converted a strategic partner into Israel’s central regional enemy.

Turkey followed the same trajectory. It was the first Muslim-majority state to recognize Israel in 1949 and developed deep defense, intelligence and commercial ties with Jerusalem. Under Erdoğan, those ties collapsed into open hostility over Gaza, Syria and regional power. Turkey’s leadership now treats Israel as a source of regional disorder.

Israel’s historical gift is finding the region’s most strategically useful non-Arab partner and discovering, a generation later, that it has acquired a new ideology, a new map and a reason to treat Israel as the enemy.

Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler brought Turkish, Azerbaijani and Uzbek forces together for joint exercises in Azerbaijan and called for Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to join future drills.

Ankara is drawing the Turkic states into a military bloc of its own.Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler brought Turkish, Azerbaijani and Uzbek forces together for joint operations in Azerbaijan, and called for Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to join future drills.

The project creates common doctrine, common officers and a political hierarchy in which Turkey supplies the strategic vocabulary.

Iran’s old resistance axis was built around militias that advertised their hatred of Israel. Turkey’s emerging axis works through governments, transport corridors, military exercises and historical vetoes.

It is quieter because it does not need a masked spokesman. It has ministries.

Azerbaijan is not yet Israel’s enemy, and its extensive relations with Israel still matter. But Ankara is changing Baku from Israel’s strategic depth into Turkey’s forward operating environment.

Israel watched Iran and Turkey travel from partnership to hostility.

#Turkey #Azerbaijan #Israel #Armenia

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Jerusalem’s Two Landlords

Erdoğan says Jerusalem is “our city.” Netanyahu says: “No, sir, you won’t. It is our city.” The city itself has heard this real-estate pitch before, usually from men whose armies are elsewhere.

Turkey’s claim is Ottoman nostalgia with an aid budget. Erdoğan invokes four centuries of Ottoman rule, Suleiman the Magnificent and Al-Aqsa as a Muslim symbol.

Ankara then funds restorations, schools and Palestinian institutions through TİKA, its state development agency. Turkey repairs a dome, finances a dormitory and calls it heritage. In Jerusalem, a renovated window can be a foreign-policy office.

Jordan owns the paperwork Ankara lacks. Article 9 of the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty recognizes the Hashemite Kingdom’s “special role” in Jerusalem’s Muslim holy shrines.

King Abdullah’s custodianship is also anchored in the 2013 agreement with Mahmoud Abbas. The Jordanian-linked Waqf administers the Islamic compound.

Even TİKA had to negotiate with Jordanian authorities when it wanted to renovate the Islamic Museum beside Al-Aqsa.

That is the collision. Turkey wants the microphone. Jordan has the keys. Israel controls security and access around the Temple Mount. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Each side has a title, a treaty, a police checkpoint or a restoration invoice. None has the whole building.

Erdoğan’s Jerusalem policy is not about acquiring a formal custodianship tomorrow.

It is about making Turkey impossible to ignore when Al-Aqsa is discussed. Jordan’s role blocks Turkey from becoming the official guardian. Turkish money works around that barrier by turning influence into a parallel form of presence.

Netanyahu tells Erdoğan that Jerusalem is Israel’s city. Erdoğan answers with Ottoman ghosts. Jordan quietly points to Article 9. At Al-Aqsa, the loudest claimant is rarely the one holding the paperwork.

#Jerusalem #Turkey #Jordan #AlAqsa

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The Aid Worker and the Parade

Four drone strikes hit Gaza on Sunday, according to local journalists, leaving at least two people dead and 16 wounded.

Gaza sources named one of the dead as Saqr Nabil Musa Qaisi, the Gaza representative of the Turkish aid organization Deniz Feneri, after a car was struck near Deir al-Balah. Initial Palestinian accounts put the wounded total from that strike anywhere between one and 10.

Israel later said Qaisi was a Hamas Nukhba Force operative who took part in the October 7 assault and had recently worked to attack Israeli troops and civilians and rebuild Hamas capabilities.

The IDF said he also ran Deniz Feneri’s Gaza operation, alleging that the Turkish charity employed Hamas operatives and financed them. Deniz Feneri presented Qaisi as its humanitarian-aid coordinator.

The car bombing therefore arrived with two biographies attached: Turkey’s aid worker and Israel’s October 7 operative.

The organization sits close enough to Ankara for the politics to be obvious. Deniz Feneri has hosted Hamas figures Khaled Mashaal and Sami Abu Zuhri at its gatherings, and Qaisi was known locally as an imam who preached in mosques across southern Gaza.

Turkey calls this solidarity. Israel calls it a Hamas funding channel. Either way, another Turkish-linked institution has become part of the Gaza battlefield.

Elsewhere, Gaza sources reported the killing of municipal employee Muadh Abu Nseira near Hamad City in Khan Younis, four wounded in Beit Lahiya, two in al-Salatin and three injured in Jabalia.

Figures remain fragmented because the attacks, casualty reporting and claims of responsibility are moving faster than verification.

In Rafah, the anti-Hamas Popular Forces militia under Ghassan al-Dahini released video of dozens of armed men marching under the title “Spear Force.”

The group says it is expanding recruitment and is thought to field roughly 600 to 800 fighters, making it the largest armed faction openly operating against Hamas inside Gaza. A militia parade is not a victory over Hamas. It is a recruitment commercial filmed inside a war zone.

The drone killed a man described as both aid official and Nukhba fighter. The militia marched to advertise its men.

Gaza now has humanitarian logos, Hamas cells and anti-Hamas uniforms sharing the same terrain. Every side calls it protection. Every side needs more bodies.

#Gaza #Hamas #Turkey #Rafah

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Haftar Chooses Ankara’s Map

Turkey helped defeat Khalifa Haftar’s assault on Tripoli in 2020. His son Saddam now wants Ankara’s backing for the presidency.

On Oct. 20, Libya’s eastern parliament approved the 2019 maritime agreement with Turkey, reversing years of opposition. Both Libyan governments now endorse the Turkish line at sea.

The deal cuts across the energy corridor that Greece, Cyprus, and Israel have promoted. Greece and Egypt reject its legality.

Aguila Saleh’s ouster as speaker cleared the way. Il Foglio attributes it to Saddam Haftar, who welcomed the deal as protection for Libya’s economic interests.

Israel’s line to Benghazi is thinner. Il Foglio reported a September meeting between Saddam Haftar and Netanyahu in Abu Dhabi. Sources cited by i24NEWS denied it.

Israel got a rumored meeting. Turkey got a ratified treaty.

Any energy route from Israel to Europe now runs into Turkish-Libyan claims, backed by the family that once fought Ankara.

#Libya #Turkey #Israel #Mediterranean

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Libya’s Extension Cord

Israel wants a power connection to Europe. Libya’s eastern parliament has just strengthened the hand of the country demanding the coordinates.

On Oct. 20, the chamber approved Turkey’s 2019 maritime deal with Tripoli after years of opposition. Ankara courted the Haftar camp with defense cooperation and investment prospects. Greece offered objections, a less attractive package.

The disputed maritime claims overlap the planned Crete–Cyprus cable route, the essential bridge for Israel’s future electricity link to Europe.

Turkey demands written notice of survey work. Greece insists that notification is not a request for permission.

“Here are the coordinates. That is all we are asking for,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Oct. 21.

Libya’s rival power brokers found common ground where Ankara found leverage. Athens now hopes to send a notice that Turkey can sell domestically as consent. Both governments could claim sovereignty while the survey ship gets back to work.

Israel’s planned connection to Europe comes with an extra adapter: Greek paperwork that Turkey can label a permit.

#BabylonBurning #Libya #Turkey #Israel #EnergyPolitics

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