{"id":40903,"date":"2026-01-04T10:20:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T10:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/963media.com\/en\/?p=40903"},"modified":"2026-01-04T11:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T11:00:10","slug":"damascus-as-a-bargaining-chip-the-israeli-turkish-struggle-for-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/963media.com\/en\/04\/01\/2026\/damascus-as-a-bargaining-chip-the-israeli-turkish-struggle-for-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Damascus as a Bargaining Chip: The Israeli\u2013Turkish Struggle for Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hussein Omar <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The dramatic transformations reshaping Syria today cannot be understood in isolation from the broader regional power struggle aimed at redefining the political function of the Syrian state in the post-collapse era. What is unfolding is not a simple change of leadership or the fall of a traditional regime, but a far-reaching process of dismantling and reconfiguration that extends beyond Syria\u2019s borders and directly affects the balance of power across the Levant. Within this complex geopolitical landscape, Damascus has emerged as a central arena for settling scores and redrawing spheres of influence between competing regional powers.<\/p>\n

From Israel\u2019s perspective, the objective is clear: to turn Syria into a demilitarized buffer entity, stripped of strategic capabilities and rendered incapable of posing any future threat. Turkey, by contrast, seeks to entrench itself as an indispensable regional actor, leveraging military and ideological tools of exceptional sensitivity; most notably radical armed factions that have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to disrupt political and security equations at critical moments.<\/p>\n

For years, Israel has relied on its \u201ccampaign between wars\u201d strategy to systematically degrade Iranian and Hezbollah military infrastructure in Syria, paving the way for a broader structural collapse. Yet Israel\u2019s endgame has never been a democratic Syria. Rather, it has aimed to engineer a moment of strategic vacuum that would allow it to impose stringent security conditions on any emerging authority. In this context, Syria\u2019s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, and his government are viewed in Tel Aviv as an \u201cideal adversary\u201d: militarily weak, internationally isolated, internally exhausted, and socially fragmented; making them highly vulnerable to political coercion in exchange for survival.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s ultimate goal is to push the new Syrian leadership toward signing a so-called \u201csecurity agreement\u201d that, in substance, amounts to a surrender of sovereignty. Such an arrangement would formalize border demarcations that legitimize Israel\u2019s occupation of the Golan Heights, sever Damascus entirely from the Palestinian cause, and transform Syria from a historical political capital into little more than a border guard operating under Israeli and international supervision.<\/p>\n

This Israeli trajectory, however, collides directly with Turkey\u2019s project in Syria, which is built on different instruments and strategic calculations. Contrary to superficial analyses portraying Ankara as alarmed by the presence of radical factions along its borders, on-the-ground realities suggest that Turkey has successfully converted these groups \u2013 ranging from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to factions such as the EU-sanctioned Amshat and Hamzat brigades \u2013 into functional proxies serving its national interests. For Turkish decision-makers, these forces are not liabilities but assets: a human reservoir and a coercive tool that secures Ankara a permanent seat at the table in any negotiations over Syria\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s sponsorship of these factions aims to cement an organic linkage between northern Syria and the Turkish strategic depth, ensuring that any political settlement in Damascus must pass through Ankara. This dynamic crystallizes the real struggle between Israel and Turkey; not over counterterrorism narratives, but over who ultimately holds decisive influence in Damascus. Ankara understands that any rush by the Al-Sharaa government to accept Israeli dictates or enter direct security arrangements with Tel Aviv would effectively strip Turkey of its most valuable strategic card.<\/p>\n

Should Israel succeed in pulling Damascus into its exclusive security orbit, Turkey would lose the alternative Syrian order it has long sought to shape according to its own parameters. This explains the firm Turkish pressure currently exerted on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham\u2019s leadership to prevent any rapid alignment with Israeli security proposals. Such a shift would erode Turkish influence and transform Damascus into a purely Israeli-Western sphere of control, threatening Ankara\u2019s core interests from Aleppo to the Syrian capital.<\/p>\n

What is unfolding behind the scenes is a classic geopolitical tug-of-war. Israel seeks a form of \u201cfunctional peace\u201d that isolates Damascus from its Arab and regional (resistance-aligned) environment, while Turkey pursues \u201cstructural influence\u201d that integrates Syria into its broader sphere of strategic depth. Caught between these competing agendas, Syria\u2019s new authority navigates a political minefield\u2014balancing its desire for international legitimacy, potentially accessible through the Israeli gateway, against its reliance on Turkish logistical and military backing.<\/p>\n

The danger of this moment lies in the steady erosion of Syrian sovereignty, as the state is reduced from a historical regional actor to a negotiable geographic space traded between rival powers seeking to optimize their positions in a shifting global order. The instrumentalization of radical factions further intensifies this risk. These groups, now embedded within the power structures of Damascus, face the challenge of transitioning from militias to state actors \u2013 a process driven less by internal reform than by the calculations of regional sponsors.<\/p>\n

By entrenching factions such as the Amshat and Hamzat brigades within Syria\u2019s emerging military framework, Turkey promotes a model of fragile stability that serves its long-term objectives: blocking Kurdish political gains on one hand and ensuring the subordination of Syria\u2019s central authority on the other. Conversely, any successful Israeli breach of this Turkish barrier would likely reshuffle the battlefield and usher in a new phase of proxy confrontation on Syrian soil.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Syria stands at an existential crossroads. The transformation of Damascus from a historic capital of Arab political agency into a contested intermediary \u2013 pulled between Israeli security imperatives and Turkish ambitions \u2013 represents the core tragedy of this era. The \u201cpeace\u201d promised through humiliating security arrangements or conditional regional sponsorship is a hollow one, aimed less at reconstruction or social healing than at institutionalizing dependency on external powers.<\/p>\n

Restoring Syria\u2019s independent national decision-making requires a fundamental rethinking of state-building itself, grounded in a civic consciousness that transcends sectarian, ethnic, and external allegiances. For now, however, such awareness remains elusive, as Syria continues to be reshaped by a carefully engineered collapse \u2013 one in which radical factionalism, foreign capital, and external patronage hold the upper hand, while the Syrian people await a historical moment that restores their right to self-determination beyond the illusions of \u201cfunctional peace\u201d and anxious proxyhood.<\/p>\n

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of +963.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hussein Omar The dramatic transformations reshaping Syria today cannot be understood in isolation from the broader regional power struggle aimed at redefining the political function of the Syrian state in the post-collapse era. What is unfolding is not a simple change of leadership or the fall of a traditional regime, but a far-reaching process of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":40905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"0","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"float","share_float_style":"share-normal","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"g:i a 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Influence"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[382,19],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[166],"class_list":["post-40903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","category-slider"],"yoast_head":"\nDamascus as a Bargaining Chip: The Israeli\u2013Turkish Struggle for Syria - 963+<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Damascus is emerging as a bargaining chip between Israel and Turkey, as competing regional projects reshape Syria\u2019s sovereignty and post-war order.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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