# The New Great Game

By [DYLIT Chronicles](https://dylit.info/user/dylitmediabuzz)

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Turkey and Israel at Sea: A Rivalry Spanning Three Waters A Friendship Frayed by Syria Turkey and Israel spent decades as quiet security partners, sharing intelligence and, at times, military technology. That relationship has soured, and Syria is the proximate cause. After Bashar al-Assad's government fell in December 2024, Ankara backed the new government in Damascus while Israel expanded strikes and territorial control in the south. On August 18, 2026, Israeli jets hit the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Idlib province, saying they were blocking a Turkish military deployment there. U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack warned the strike carried a "real risk of rapid escalation into a direct military confrontation." Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has said Israel has become "a burden that humanity can no longer bear." Most analysts frame this as strategic rivalry rather than an inevitable war: interests are colliding and an accidental clash is a real risk, but neither government wants open conflict. Eastern Mediterranean: Gas, Cyprus, and Rival Blocs This is the theater where friction runs deepest. Offshore gas finds off Cyprus and Israel once drove talk of a joint export pipeline to Europe, a project Ankara saw as an attempt to box it out of regional energy politics. That project has since stalled for technical and financial reasons, but the diplomatic alignment it produced has hardened into something more military. Israel, Greece, and Cyprus have built a trilateral security architecture, including a 2026 joint action plan and a Greece-Israel military cooperation program, explicitly outside Turkey's reach. Cyprus itself remains the sharpest flashpoint: Turkish naval and air assets operate from the island's north, while Israeli, Greek, and Cypriot forces run joint drills nearby. In June 2026, Israel's Channel 12 reported that Turkish vessels shadowed an Israeli missile ship within a few hundred meters during one such exercise. Black Sea: Turkey's Quiet Leverage Israel has no direct presence here, so this sea is less a battlefield between the two than a demonstration of how much weight Turkey carries elsewhere. Ankara's control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles under the 1936 Montreux Convention lets it regulate warship traffic between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, a power it exercised after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine to limit belligerent naval transits. Analysts increasingly describe this gatekeeping role as one layer in a broader Turkish "perimeter" that also includes northern Cyprus, Syria, and the Horn of Africa. The Black Sea itself isn't a point of contention for Israel, but Turkey's outsized leverage there feeds into how Jerusalem assesses Ankara's overall reach and staying power. Red Sea and Arabian Sea: The Horn of Africa Contest Roughly 12 percent of global seaborne trade passes through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait into the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and both countries are positioning for influence along that corridor. Turkey has run its largest overseas base, TURKSOM, in Mogadishu since 2017 and signed a maritime defense pact with Somalia in 2024. In February 2026, it sent a deep-sea drilling ship to Somali waters escorted by Turkish warships, its first such overseas mission. Israel's countermove has centered on Somaliland, where a potential foothold near Berbera would let Jerusalem watch both Iranian smuggling routes and Turkish naval movement near the strait. Houthi attacks on shipping, including vessels linked to Israel, have made the corridor volatile for both sides since 2023. A Rivalry Still Short of Collision Across all three seas, the pattern looks similar: competition over bases, alliances, and infrastructure rather than a march toward direct war. Washington is trying to keep it that way, pushing toward a deconfliction mechanism between Israel, Turkey, and Syria after the August airbase strike. Both countries have deep incentives to avoid a war neither can fully control, and history shows their relationship has cycled between hostility and cooperation before. But Syria has changed the terms of the contest. For the first time, Turkish and Israeli security interests overlap on the same ground, at the same moment, with no buffer between them. That proximity, more than any single incident, is why officials and analysts on both sides now speak of the relationship in terms once reserved for adversaries. Sources Behind Israeli strike in Syria: A growing rivalry with Turkey — The Christian Science Monitor https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2026/0903/israel-turkey-syria-netanyahu-erdogan-iran-gaza Turkey's Rise in the Middle East Is Israel's New Problem — Foreign Policy https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/08/27/turkey-israel-syria-middle-east-us-allies/ Turkey-Israel Rivalry in the New Syria — Stimson Center https://www.stimson.org/2026/turkey-israel-rivalry-in-the-new-syria/ Related videos Are the Middle East's two biggest military powers heading for a dangerous clash? — DW News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHHgEDKeyE Could Syria trigger a Türkiye-Israel conflict? — Al Jazeera English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjSVU5rb0Uc