Washington Slow To Tackle a Brewing Crisis, as America’s Most Powerful Mideast Allies, Turkey and Israel, Lock Horns

As Turkey and Israel attempt to avert confrontation, relations between the region’s two most formidable militaries are deteriorating, raising risks of a catastrophic clash that Washington is yet to seriously tackle. After Israeli jets hit the al-Duhur airbase in Syria last week, rhetoric escalated between Ankara and Jerusalem. On Sunday, though, Mossad chief, Roman Gofman, met at Amman with Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad al Shaibani to lower the temperature. They reportedly agreed to establish a tripartite Israeli-Turkish-Syrian group, overseen by America and Jordan, in an attempt to prevent future confrontations. “We can come to terms,” a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yaakov Amidror, tells The New York Sun. “It won’t be a signed pact, but we will make clear our red lines: No Turkish troops on Syrian soil, no military bases near our border. The Turks don’t want further escalation. We don’t want it either, but the Turks are the ones that violated the status quo.”Miscalculation, though, could easily ignite a kinetic confrontation. Israel increasingly sees Turkey as a hostile country. Over the weekend Ankara filed with Interpol a “red notice” for Mr. Netanyahu’s arrest, accusing him of “genocide” and “war crimes,” citing Israel’s blocking of ships owned by a Jihadi Turkish group, the IHH, which had attempted to breach Israeli waters, claiming to deliver aid to Gaza. The arrest warrant will “go nowhere,” Mr. Netanyahu retorted. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is “an antisemitic dictator who has massacred Kurds, harbors Hamas terrorists, occupies half of Cyprus, and jails record numbers of journalists and politicians who oppose him.” President Trump said recently that when America and Israel struck Iran on February 28, Mr. Erdogan “was a prime candidate to go into the war with Iran, maybe on the Iran side, because he’s not a big fan of Israel.” He added that only his friendship with Mr. Erdogan prevented Turkey from joining the war on the wrong side. As Iran’s Shiite regime is weakening, meanwhile, Ankara is now tightening relations with Sunni allies in the hope of dominating the region. The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, signed on August 8 between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, is but the most visible part of Mr. Erdogan’s ambition to unite Sunni powers — and undermine Israel’s integration in the region.Ankara, for one, is undermining the India Mideast Economic Corridor, a plan hatched by President Biden’s administration, and could reduce dependence on the Hormuz Strait. The plan’s original route to Europe from India would involve Saudi Arabia and Israel. Mr. Erdogan, though, is leaning on Riyadh to bypass Israel’s Haifa port in favor of Latakia, Syria, or a Turkish port. Ankara is attempting to “build up regional opinion, a regional mindset of Sunni states to isolate and put Israel in a box,” a Turkey watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Sinan Ciddi, tells the Sun. “We all play this down and think it can’t really happen. Yet we would be shocked — but not surprised — if we saw a firefight that breaks out between the Israelis and Turks in the next 12 months.”Tom Barrack and Washington’s Mixed SignalsThe American ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, who is also Mr. Trump’s envoy to Syria, denounced Israel immediately after last Tuesday’s strike. It was “an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability,” Mr. Barrack said, as he launched a series of interviews on Israeli and anti-Israel press outlets.The White House refrained from commenting. Mr. Barrack’s immediate boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has a history of pro-Israel policies, was reportedly livid. Then Mr. Barrack went too far in one of his interviews — and was forced to issue a retraction. The Israelis “still occupy the Golan against the UN resolutions, against all of the international order, which has said the Golan is Syria’s,” Mr. Barrack told a podcaster, Mario Nawfal, last week. Unlike the UN, though, America recognizes Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. After apparent pressure Mr. Barrack was forced to acknowledge on Sunday that “United States policy on the Golan was set by President Trump in 2019 and is unchanged.”The episode underlines what Mr. Barrack’s Washington critics say is his deference to Mr. Erdogan’s views and Turkey’s interests over America’s larger regional considerations. Regional reports claim that Mr. Rubio is attempting to fire the ambassador, who boasts a long personal friendship with Mr. Trump. Washington “is juggling multiple balls in the Middle East, so war of words and escalatory behavior between Israelis and Turks — we can’t be everywhere,” Mr Ciddi says. Yet, he adds, America “should be able to call balls and strikes and prevent further conflict between two major allies in the region, which could suck the entire region into an unparalleled conflict that nobody wants.”Mutual Assured Destruction?After America, Turkey boasts the second largest military among North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. With up to 480,000 active service members and 350,000 reservists, Ankara commands a formidable land, air, and naval force. Some 1,500 American personnel are stationed at the strategically-located Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey.The alliance with Washington, though, was strained when Ankara decided to purchase S-400 air defenses from Russia. Turkey was booted from the F-35 fighter jet program in Mr. Trump’s first term. The Israel Defense Forces, though, operates at least 48 F-35 “Adir” jets, which it deploys in several arenas, including in strikes against Iran. Turkey reportedly failed to detect last week’s strike on the Syrian airbase, which could explain its reluctance to scramble its F-16 jets against what is seen as Israel’s better-equipped Air Force. At the same time, Turkey’s Navy is much larger than Israel’s, making a regional confrontation at sea unlikely.Israelis, for now, are eager to avoid confrontation. “The attempt to paint Turkey as the next Iran is a wild exaggeration,” Mr. Amidror says. “Turkey is trying to expand its hold on the Mideast, but unlike Iran it doesn’t say each morning that it wants to exterminate us, and unlike Iran it doesn’t have proxies” that are hostile to Israel.

Washington Slow To Tackle a Brewing Crisis, as America’s Most Powerful Mideast Allies, Turkey and Israel, Lock Horns

Washington Slow To Tackle a Brewing Crisis, as America’s Most Powerful Mideast Allies, Turkey and Israel, Lock Horns

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