Aug 20 (Reuters) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was “dragging Turkey into dangerous adventures in Syria”, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday, following an attack on a Syrian airbase earlier this week.
Israel struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Syria on Tuesday, warning Syria was on the verge of violating a “status quo agreed with Israel in security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy at the airbase.
Katz, in a post on X, said his country would not “allow any entity to threaten its security.”
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said he made clear to Israel there were no plans to set up a Turkish military base and that the site was being rehabilitated for use by the Syrian Air Force.
“There was no intention to establish a Turkish base there, nor to establish a permanent Turkish military presence or deploy Turkish forces at the site,” Al-Shaibani said in an interview with Axios on Wednesday.
The strikes on Tuesday follow worsening security tensions between Israel and Turkey and increasingly sharp rhetoric between the two countries over Syria, where both countries’ militaries are active.
Turkey firmly rejected on Wednesday what it called “untenable allegations” by Israel regarding its military position in Syria after Israel said Syria was on the verge of permitting Turkish troops to deploy there.
Turkey, which has NATO’s second-largest army and has emerged as one of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s main allies, accuses Israel of trying to destabilise Syria and undermine its new administration, repeatedly calling for international pressure and measures on Israel to respect Syria’s territorial integrity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel warned Syria ahead of the strike not to allow a Turkish presence at the base.
“Our message was very clear. Don’t. I guess they didn’t quite understand the message,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
Syria’s Al-Shaibani said Israel had no legitimate justification for the bombing.
He added that Turkish military officers had visited the base as part of training and broader military cooperation. He denied any Turkish military build-up, saying the facility was largely empty and not yet operational.
Last year, Turkey and Israel — also sharply at odds over the war in Gaza — established a line of communication to avoid any incidents in Syria.
Tom Barrack, the U.S. special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq, told Reuters after the strikes on Tuesday that Washington was working to establish a deconfliction mechanism among Israel, Turkey and Syria.
Syria remained open to negotiations with Israel on de-escalation, Al-Shaibani said. The two sides had made significant progress toward a security agreement during a year of U.S.-mediated talks, but Israel later backed away from commitments and the agreement was not implemented, he added.
Al-Shaibani said any future deal must address the security concerns of both sides and respect Syrian sovereignty, warning that continued Israeli military operations would increase regional instability.
(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Nafisa Eltahir and Jana Choukeir in Dubai; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
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