Israel's "Turkey threat": paranoia produced by aggression, but its being paranoia does not mean Israel is not being watched

Israel's attacks on Syria are now at a limit that can be explained neither by an "Iranian threat" nor by classical security rationales. When Iran was at its strongest in Syria, with all its military, intelligence and Hezbollah assets, Israel never felt such a great threat. Only once Bashar al-Assad, who kept Iran in that country, was toppled and replaced by an administration representing the Syrian people did Israel begin to feel the greatest threats in its history from Syria, and to attack.

Meanwhile, the strike on Abu al-Duhur Military Airport in the Idlib countryside, quite close to the Turkish border, shows the point reached by the license Israel grants itself to intervene. Of course, it is obvious that this license it grants itself is in every respect an impudence. Turning even another country's setting up radar or an air defense system on its own territory into a pretext for attack is no longer a defensive reflex but a matter of raging aggression that must be dealt with as required.

An article published in the Jerusalem Post under the byline of David M. Weinberg lays bare, in all its nakedness, where this mentality has arrived. The author says that Israel may one day encounter "Turkish tanks" in the Golan and "Turkish frigates" off Caesarea; he presents the strike in Idlib as a necessary message sent to Turkey; and finally he utters this chilling sentence: "From Idlib to Istanbul, if necessary, Israel will strike."

That Israel pronounces with such ease that it could strike the city of a NATO country is an expression not of being under threat but of a spoiledness that sees itself above every kind of international limit. Like all spoiled behavior, it is unaware that it is running toward its own end at an unparalleled speed.

Moreover, when the logic of the article is followed carefully, the nature of the so-called "Turkish threat" also emerges. Turkey's developing its navy is a threat; building new frigates and submarines is a threat; developing its own fighter jet is a threat; helping Syria strengthen its air defense is a threat; developing defense cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is a threat...

In short, Turkey's growing stronger is in itself a threat to Israel.

The truth is that, from Israel's standpoint, the essential problem here is not even the possibility of Turkey's attacking Israel. It is Turkey's reaching a capacity that would complicate a regional order in which Israel can attack whenever it wishes.

This is precisely the meaning of the Idlib strike. Israel regards moving as it pleases in Syrian airspace as almost an acquired right. And Syria's possessing radar and an air defense system capable of controlling its own airspace is described as "obstructing the Israeli Air Force's operations." In fact it considers itself entitled to do everything it can. What it manages to do without meeting an obstacle turns, for it, into an established right. History has not recorded so arrogant and rampant an occupier.

Syria will not be able to set up a system that can defend its own country, because that might limit Israel's "freedom" to bomb Syria whenever it wants!

The form Israel's security concept is increasingly taking is this: the defenselessness of my neighbors is my security. Consequently, Syria's recovery is deemed a threat, Turkey's strengthening is a threat, and the regional countries' developing defense mechanisms among themselves is a threat.

Our friend Selçuk Türkyılmaz, too, in assessing the Idlib strike, draws attention to an important point. He says that Israel has long sought to gain strategic superiority by dragging the Palestinians and surrounding countries into conflict at a time of its own choosing, under conditions in which they are unprepared; and that it is exerting a similar pressure on the new Syrian administration. The Damascus administration's not falling into this trap, and the emergence of new regional defense quests of which Turkey is a part, creates an unusual situation for Israel.

For the Middle East Israel is used to is a fragmented Middle East. Syria will be weak, Iraq will wrestle with its own problems, the Gulf countries will suspect one another, Turkey will keep away from regional matters, and Israel will be able to enter the airspace of whichever country it wants and strike whichever target it wants.

When this order begins to erode, Israel's "security concern" grows. For this reason, the depiction of Turkey in Weinberg's article looks less like a rational threat analysis than a text of strategic paranoia. Claims such as that Erdoğan is building a pan-Islamic front including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar and partly Egypt, that he is preparing an Islamic confederation to replace NATO, and that Iran is preparing to join Israel's war are listed one after another. Even Turkey's forming relations with Russia, China and Iran is narrated almost as parts of a single grand plan aimed at encircling Israel.

More importantly, the intolerance that Turkey's military and technological achievements in recent years have created in this discourse is openly expressed.

In place of the Turkey that was once compelled to obtain defense systems from it, there is a Turkey developing its own UAVs and armed UAVs (SİHAs), warships, frigates, submarines and fighter jet. It is inevitable that this capacity will change the balance of power in the region.

There is another dimension Türkyılmaz points to. The reaction that Israel's war in Gaza since 7 October has produced in European and especially British public opinion has turned into a serious loss of legitimacy for Israel. Türkyılmaz assesses the relationships of Britain and Germany with Israel as going beyond a simple relationship of "support," and draws attention to the possibility that the growing social reaction against Israel may be sought to be balanced by putting old anti-Turkish images back into circulation. This interpretation can of course be debated separately; but Weinberg's article offers an example striking enough to make one think of this possibility: Israel suddenly depicts itself as surrounded by Turkish tanks in the Golan and Turkish warships off Caesarea.

Yet today it was not Turkey that bombed Idlib; it was Israel that bombed it. It was not Turkey that violated Syrian airspace; it was Israel that violated it. And then the aggressor presents itself as the victim of an imagined future Turkish attack.

This is precisely the strategic impasse into which Israel is increasingly falling. A country that ties its own security to the powerlessness of the whole region is doomed to see every recovery around it as a threat.

Syria's becoming a state again becomes a threat. Turkey's growing stronger becomes a threat. Cooperation among the regional countries becomes a threat. Even neighbors' having air defense systems that can defend themselves against Israeli attacks becomes a threat.

This is not security; it is a demand for unlimited superiority.

But this is what Israel must now get used to: the Middle East is not an ownerless geography in which Israel can bomb whichever country it wants whenever it wants. Turkey's growing stronger is also a harbinger that unilateral, rampant and aggressive use of force in the region will increasingly meet limits.