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Israel and Turkey have launched talks to avoid inadvertent clashes inside Syria as the regional rivals expand their influence and military presence inside the war-torn Arab state.
Turkey, which long-backed the Syrian opposition, became the main foreign power in Syria after Islamist rebels toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad in December, ending more than a decade of civil war.
Israel took advantage of the security vacuum to launch waves of air strikes targeting Assad military assets, and sent ground troops across the border to establish a wide self-declared “buffer zone” across south-west Syria, setting it on a possible collision course with Ankara.
The first round of “deconfliction” talks were hosted by Azerbaijan on Wednesday and attended by senior Israeli and Turkish security officials, both countries said on Thursday. A person familiar with the matter said US representatives were also involved in the meeting.
It was the “first technical meeting . . . to establish a de-escalation mechanism to prevent undesirable incidents in Syria”, a Turkish defence official said.
“Each side presented its interests in the region, and agreed to continue the path of dialogue in order to maintain security stability,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. Both countries indicated the talks would continue.
The meeting came after US President Donald Trump met Netanyahu at the White House on Monday and offered to mediate between the pair, saying he had “great relations” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and urging the Israeli leader to be “reasonable”.
Last week, Israeli jets struck several Syrian air bases to which Turkish forces had been preparing to deploy, according to Israeli and Turkish officials, including the Tiyas (T4) air base in Homs.
The air strikes destroyed parts of Tiyas’s runways, hangars and Soviet-era equipment that had been abandoned by the Syrian military in December.
A person familiar with the plans said Turkey had intended to place troops and surveillance drones at the base, to be followed by lethal drones and fighter aircraft under an anti-terrorism operation as it worked to finalise a defence pact with Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Turkey, which sees the presence of Kurdish militants and Isis fighters inside Syria as a severe threat, is eager for Sharaa to solidify his control. Ankara worries that Israel’s interventions will hinder efforts to stabilise the country.
The Israeli military is particularly concerned about the deployment of Turkish air defences, which would reduce the freedom of movement Israeli jets have had over Syrian skies for years, an Israeli intelligence official said.
Israel has dismissed Sharaa as a jihadist and insisted that much of southern Syria should be a demilitarised zone to be enforced by the Israeli military.
Netanyahu said earlier this week that Turkish intentions to establish military bases in Syria endangered Israel, and that Israel is “working against it” while also open to a diplomatic solution.
“You can’t be an Israeli decision maker without fearing Turkey moving southward in Syria [closer to the border with Israel],” said Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
The person familiar with Israeli government deliberations expressed optimism about the Azerbaijan talks, adding that there was a sense “things will work out”.
Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, told CNN Turk on Wednesday that it was “natural” Israel be added to a pre-existing deconfliction mechanism for Syria, similar to those with the US, Russia and other regional states.
“When we do certain operations in Syria, from the air or otherwise, we need to have a deconfliction mechanism in areas where Israel is flying planes, just as we do with the Americans, the Russians [and] Iran,” he said.
Israel and Turkey have long-standing diplomatic relations dating back over seven decades, since just after Israel’s founding in 1948. Yet these have grown increasingly strained under Erdoğan, who has been in power since 2003.
Those ties deteriorated further following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October 2023. Erdoğan has criticised Israel for committing a “genocide” in the Palestinian enclave, comparing Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, while Israeli officials have called the Turkish leader an antisemite and a dictator. Both countries have recalled their ambassadors.
Lindenstrauss said that while “in the past there were mechanisms that softened tensions”, the current state of the bilateral relationship “increases the chances of a real severing of ties”.
According to a former senior Israeli official, there is now “no strategic co-ordination nor intimate dialogue” between the pair.
“This creates fear — by us of them, and them of us,” the official added. “The most important thing right now is to calm things down. You don’t enter a conflict so quickly, especially with a Nato state [like Turkey].”
