Turkey and Israel have started talks to prevent conflicts between their troops in Syria, as an Israeli military campaign and a growing rivalry for influence have raised tensions.
The Turkish and Israeli governments said in statements that a meeting took place on Wednesday in Azerbaijan. The meeting between military and security officials was aimed at working out a way “to prevent undesired incidents in Syria,” a Turkish Defense Ministry statement said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the two sides had agreed to keep up a dialogue.
The meeting came just ahead of a planned visit by Syria’s new leader, President Ahmed al-Shara, to Turkey on Friday to discuss security and military cooperation, Syrian television reported.
A rebel coalition, led by Mr. al-Shara and backed by Turkey, overthrew President Bashar al-Assad in December, forcing Mr. Assad’s main allies, Russia and Iran, largely to withdraw. In the resulting power vacuum, Israel and Turkey have been competing for influence. The rivalry is adding to the instability in Syria, where the new government is struggling, under pressure from regional powers, to stabilize a country divided and wounded after 13 years of civil war.
Turkey has long occupied parts of northern Syria in support of the opposition fighting the Assad regime, as well as to combat Kurdish rebels that it calls a terrorist threat to its own forces. Turkey recently offered to train a new Syrian army and to upgrade Syria’s army bases and airports, analysts say, though Syria has not publicly confirmed its acceptance of the offer.
After the fall of Mr. al-Assad, Israel moved troops into a long-established buffer zone along the Golan Heights, and then beyond it, occupying parts of southern Syria and carrying out hundreds of bombing raids against Syrian military depots and bases.
Syria’s new government under Mr. al-Shara has protested Israel’s strikes and incursions as an attempt to destabilize the country, and has announced a foreign policy of nonaggression with all its neighbors. It has said little publicly about the role it plans for Turkey to play.
But the maneuvering of the two rivals escalated sharply last week as Israel bombed several bases, an attack that Syria said wounded dozens of soldiers and civilians. The bases were among those that Turkey had offered to use and upgrade, according to widespread media reports in Turkey and Syria.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, accused Israel of expansionist aims in Syria, in comments on a Turkish television channel on Wednesday, and said that Turkey had no intention of entering into conflict with Israel or any other country in Syria.
“We cannot watch Syria be exposed one more time to domestic turmoil, to an operation, a provocation that would threaten Turkey’s national security,” he said. “We cannot be content to just watch.”
Turkey would be conducting military operations in Syria, including using aircraft, he said, and so there was a need to talk with Israel, as with other military forces in Syria, to prevent accidents.
The dispute between Israel and Turkey was serious enough to feature in talks at the White House during Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on Tuesday, with President Trump offering to mediate between the two countries.
“We don’t want to see Syria being used by anyone, including Turkey, as a base for attack on Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. He did not explain under what circumstance he believed Turkey might attack Israel, but the presence of Turkish jets and air defense systems in bases in southern Syria would restrict Israeli flights in the region.
“We discussed how we can avoid this conflict in a variety of ways and I think we cannot have a better interlocutor than the President of the United States for this purpose,” Mr. Netanyahu added.
“I have a very good relationship with Turkey and with their leader and I think we going to be able to work it out,” Mr. Trump responded.
But he added, looking directly at Mr. Netanyahu, “You have to be reasonable.”
Safak Timur contributed reporting from Istanbul, Muhammad Haj Kadour from Damascus, and Adam Rasgon from Jerusalem.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com