{"id":8024,"date":"2026-01-09T06:25:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T06:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=8024"},"modified":"2026-01-09T06:25:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T06:25:03","slug":"is-the-eastern-mediterranean-becoming-israels-new-front-against-turkiye-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=8024","title":{"rendered":"Is the Eastern Mediterranean becoming Israel\u2019s new front against Turkiye? | Conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Two meetings, held almost simultaneously towards the end of December, offered a stark illustration of the competing strategic visions now shaping the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant.<\/p>\n

In Damascus, Turkiye\u2019s foreign, defence and intelligence chiefs met Syrian officials on December 22 as Ankara continued to prioritise the consolidation of state authority and stabilisation after the fall of Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government in Syria.<\/p>\n

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list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n

On the same day, Israel hosted Greece and Cyprus for the latest iteration of their trilateral framework. Two days before\u00a0that meeting, Israel launched another air attack on Syria \u2013 one of more than 600 strikes in 2025 \u2013 a reminder to Ankara and Damascus that Israel is willing to disrupt Syria\u2019s recovery from war.<\/p>\n

While officially framed around energy cooperation and regional connectivity, the trilateral agenda between Israel, Greece and Cyprus has steadily expanded to encompass security coordination and military alignment, signalling a shift from economic competition to strategic containment.<\/p>\n

For Cem Gurdeniz, a retired admiral and one of the architects of Turkiye\u2019s \u201cBlue Homeland\u201d maritime doctrine that calls for Ankara to safeguard its interests across the surrounding seas \u2013 the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea \u2013 the meeting was an attempt \u201cto exclude and encircle Turkiye\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gurdeniz describes Israel\u2019s approach as an indirect containment strategy aimed not at confrontation but at altering Ankara\u2019s behaviour. \u201cThe objective is not war, but behavioural change \u2013 narrowing Turkiye\u2019s strategic space to induce withdrawal without conflict,\u201d he told Al Jazeera, warning against treating the standoff as routine energy competition.<\/p>\n

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A map showing Eastern Mediterranean states: Turkiye, Cyprus, Israel and Greece [Al Jazeera]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Israel, the trilateral framework reflects unease with Turkiye\u2019s approach in Syria, which prioritises territorial integrity and the restoration of central authority \u2013 an outcome that runs counter to Israel\u2019s preference for a fragmented regional security landscape.<\/p>\n

Greece and Cyprus, meanwhile, view the partnership as a means to advance maritime boundary claims and energy corridors that would marginalise Turkiye\u2019s role in the Eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Security and military cooperation now form a central pillar of the trilateral agenda, according to Muzaffer Senel, a visiting scholar of European studies at Marmara University.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll three actors have sought to create faits accomplis through unilateral initiatives in the region in what they jointly perceive as a common rival: Turkiye,\u201d Senel told Al Jazeera in reference to possible security and energy arrangements between the three countries that could threaten Ankara\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s gambit<\/h2>\n

The decision to hold the trilateral meeting in Israel was not incidental. It reflected the shrinking diplomatic space available to the Israeli leadership as the genocidal war on Gaza deepens Israel\u2019s international isolation.<\/p>\n

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, his ability to travel abroad has become increasingly constrained, particularly to countries that are signatories to the court, such as Greece and Cyprus.<\/p>\n

The Greek government, while not rejecting the ICC\u2019s warrant for Netanyahu \u2013 which also includes one for Israel\u2019s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant \u2013 has said<\/a> that \u201cthese decisions do not help\u201d. Cyprus has also noted<\/a> that the ICC warrants are binding. Neither has publicly said that they will not execute the warrants.<\/p>\n

Hosting the Greek and Cypriot leaders in Israel was therefore not simply a logistical choice, but a symptom of how legal and diplomatic pressures are reshaping Israel\u2019s outlook and pushing it towards security-centric alliances.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the meeting served to recast Turkiye as a regional problem through coded Ottoman references and narratives of expansionist ambition, aimed at eroding Ankara\u2019s interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Standing alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, Netanyahu \u2013 a longtime advocate of a Greater Israel \u2013 warned that \u201cthose who fantasise they can re-establish their empires and their dominion over our lands\u201d should \u201cforget it\u201d, a remark widely interpreted as a reference to Turkiye.<\/p>\n

As a peninsular state, Turkiye has more than 8,300km (5,100 miles) of coastline. Greece argues its Aegean islands, many of which lie just off the Turkish coast, generate their own exclusive economic zones (EEZ), extending maritime claims up to 200 nautical miles (about 370km).<\/p>\n

\"Greece
(Al Jazeera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ankara rejects this, saying islands cannot create full EEZs and that borders should be drawn from the mainland.<\/p>\n

Cyprus is another flashpoint. After a Greek Cypriot coup in 1974, Turkiye intervened as a guarantor power, splitting the island. Turkiye is the only country to recognise the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. In 2004, the north backed a United Nations reunification plan, but the Greek-administered south rejected it, leaving the conflict unresolved.<\/p>\n

In the Eastern Mediterranean, these regional wedge issues have given Israel an opportunity to insert itself and further inflame tensions.<\/p>\n

Greece, in particular, has sought to leverage Israel\u2019s close ties with Washington to secure diplomatic backing in longstanding maritime boundary disputes.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreece seeks to involve the US through Israel in order to gain diplomatic backing for resolving Eastern Mediterranean maritime boundary issues,\u201d said Senel. Those disputes \u2013 involving gas exploration rights also claimed by Turkiye \u2013 have long fuelled regional tensions and now form part of a broader effort to constrain Ankara\u2019s strategic room for manoeuvre.<\/p>\n

While no formal collective defence agreement has been signed, high-level cooperation among the three states is moving beyond ad hoc coordination towards a more institutionalised security framework. The inclusion of the United States as a \u201clike-minded partner\u201d under a so-called 3+1 format<\/a>, Senel noted, \u201cclearly conveys a strategic message directed at Turkiye\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although the trilateral mechanism stops short of a formal military alliance, its trajectory points towards deeper security and defence cooperation, reinforcing Ankara\u2019s perception of an emerging containment axis in the eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Emerging anti-Turkiye axis<\/h2>\n

Relations between Greece, Cyprus and Israel have not been hindered by Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza, which began in October 2023.<\/p>\n

Unlike several other European Union states that have described Israel\u2019s campaign in Gaza as genocide or ethnic cleansing and called for sanctions over violations of international law, Greece and Cyprus have remained largely silent while expanding cooperation with Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the current context, where the Greek Cypriots will assume the presidency of the Council of the EU, and at a time when the EU is ignoring Turkiye\u2019s geostrategic position and importance, finding diplomatic pathways to alleviate the tensions is a hard task,\u201d said Zeynep Alemdar, foreign policy programme director at the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

\u201cEU officials do not understand the mutual benefits of including Turkiye in the energy and defence calculations of the region,\u201d Alemdar told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

In December, Greek parliamentarians approved the purchase of 36 PULS rocket artillery systems from Israel for approximately $760m.<\/p>\n

The two countries are also advancing towards a major defence agreement estimated at $3.5bn, under which Israeli defence firms would construct a multi-layered air defence system for Greece.<\/p>\n

In September 2025, Cyprus also received an Israeli-made air defence system costing tens of millions of dollars, with further deliveries expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cTurkiye will surely try to dilute this coalition through diplomacy with its Middle Eastern allies, yet Israel\u2019s disruption will continue. Israel\u2019s and Turkiye\u2019s interests in the region will bring about more confrontations,\u201d noted Alemdar.<\/p>\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkiye \u201cwill not allow violations of its rights in the Aegean and the Mediterranean\u201d, without naming the three countries or referring directly to their meeting.<\/p>\n

Rear Admiral Zeki Akturk, the press and public relations adviser and spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence, sought to downplay the trilateral meeting, noting that it \u201cdoes not pose a military threat to Turkiye\u201d.<\/p>\n

Turkiye, for its part, has also embarked on its largest naval procurement process, with a price tag estimated at about $8bn and 31 ships in the process of being built in 2025 alone to defend its interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

The process has largely been driven by skirmishes between Greece and Turkiye dating back to 2020, when both parties used naval assets to lay claim to conflicting economic zones, and when Ankara realised it needed to invest more in its navy to avoid being squeezed out of the Eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Turkiye\u2019s regional approach<\/h2>\n

Analysts are also warning that Turkiye\u2019s calibrated response to the trilateral meeting risks underestimating a broader pattern of Israeli provocations across multiple theatres.<\/p>\n

From Syria to the Eastern Mediterranean \u2013 and, more recently, Somalia, following Israel\u2019s recognition of the breakaway Somaliland region \u2013 Israel has demonstrated a willingness to exploit political fractures in ways that undermine state consolidation.<\/p>\n

In Syria, this approach has been particularly visible and feeds into Israel\u2019s policies in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Israeli bombing of the presidential palace and the Ministry of Defence in Damascus in July last year was widely seen as an attempt to weaken the Syrian government at a moment of renewed diplomatic engagement.<\/p>\n

Turkiye\u2019s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned in December that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were \u201cin coordination<\/a> with Israel\u201d to obstruct Syria\u2019s stabilisation.<\/p>\n

A recent Al Jazeera Arabic investigation obtained hours of leaked audio recordings of senior military officers from the regime of the ousted leader al-Assad, discussing plans to destabilise Syria and suggesting coordination with Israel.<\/p>\n

Taken together, Israeli actions in Syria increasingly resemble a template for indirect pressure \u2013 not aimed at direct confrontation with Turkiye, but at constraining Ankara\u2019s influence by entrenching instability along its southern flank.<\/p>\n

In seeking to grind down Turkiye in Syria while advancing its naval strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean, \u201cthe result is a dual-pressure model that exhausts and distracts Turkiye, turning each move into a potential crisis and steadily eroding its initiative\u201d, said the retired Turkish admiral Cem Gurdeniz.<\/p>\n

Israeli recognition of Somaliland likely reinforces Turkiye\u2019s concern that Israel is willing to legitimise breakaway coastal entities when doing so undercuts stabilisation efforts aligned with Turkiye\u2019s maritime interests.<\/p>\n

This approach also finds support within Israel\u2019s ideological ecosystem. The right-wing political theorist Yoram Hazony, a close ally of Netanyahu, has openly argued for the fragmentation of regional states such as Iraq and Syria into smaller entities organised along sectarian or communal lines \u2013 a vision that aligns with policies privileging division over consolidation.<\/p>\n

\u201cTurkiye should stop treating this as episodic friction and treat it as Israel\u2019s deliberate attempt to shape the post-Assad order in Syria while tightening a Mediterranean alignment that sidelines Ankara,\u201d Andreas Krieg, associate professor of security studies at King\u2019s College London, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe response needs to be practical, coercive in the political sense, and geared to results rather than signalling,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Turkiye has a track record of acting proactively when it believes its national interests are at stake. In Libya, Ankara\u2019s military support for the internationally recognised government in 2020 prevented its collapse. Similarly, Ankara\u2019s backing of Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia helped tip the balance, enabling Baku to recapture territory occupied by Armenian forces.<\/p>\n

Israeli threats to destabilise Syria, Somalia and Yemen could provide Ankara with an opening with countries it has had rocky relations (since improved) with in recent years, mainly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which increasingly are also threatened by Israeli influence in the region and have most recently condemned Israeli recognition of Somaliland.<\/p>\n

Ankara should not only expand relations with such key Arab states, Krieg said, it also needs to take practical steps that make \u201calternative formats commercially and strategically attractive\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTurkiye will not dismantle that [Eastern Mediterranean] axis with rhetoric,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnkara should expose and disrupt Israeli influence operations rather than arguing about motives,\u201d he warned, adding that \u201cthe point is to make it politically expensive for Israel to posture as a stabiliser while acting as a patron of breakaway structures,\u201d said Krieg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strategic risk for Turkiye is gradualism; [Ankara\u2019s] objective should be explicit: prevent a permanent Israeli security carve-out in southern Syria and prevent an Eastern Mediterranean order in which Ankara is boxed in,\u201d Krieg concluded.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Two meetings, held almost simultaneously towards the end of December, offered a stark illustration of the competing strategic visions now shaping the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. In Damascus, Turkiye\u2019s foreign, defence and intelligence chiefs met Syrian officials on December 22 as Ankara continued to prioritise the consolidation of state authority and stabilisation after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}