Two conferences, held virtually concurrently in direction of the tip of December, provided a stark illustration of the competing strategic visions now shaping the Japanese Mediterranean and the Levant.
In Damascus, Turkiye’s international, defence and intelligence chiefs met Syrian officers on December 22 as Ankara continued to prioritise the consolidation of state authority and stabilisation after the autumn of Bashar al-Assad’s authorities in Syria.
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On the identical day, Israel hosted Greece and Cyprus for the newest iteration of their trilateral framework. Two days earlier than that assembly, Israel launched one other air assault on Syria – one among greater than 600 strikes in 2025 – a reminder to Ankara and Damascus that Israel is keen to disrupt Syria’s restoration from conflict.
Whereas formally framed round power cooperation and regional connectivity, the trilateral agenda between Israel, Greece and Cyprus has steadily expanded to embody safety coordination and navy alignment, signalling a shift from financial competitors to strategic containment.
For Cem Gurdeniz, a retired admiral and one of many architects of Turkiye’s “Blue Homeland” maritime doctrine that requires Ankara to safeguard its pursuits throughout the encircling seas – the Aegean, Japanese Mediterranean and the Black Sea – the assembly was an try “to exclude and encircle Turkiye”.
Gurdeniz describes Israel’s method as an oblique containment technique aimed not at confrontation however at altering Ankara’s behaviour. “The target will not be conflict, however behavioural change – narrowing Turkiye’s strategic area to induce withdrawal with out battle,” he instructed Al Jazeera, warning towards treating the standoff as routine power competitors.
For Israel, the trilateral framework displays unease with Turkiye’s method in Syria, which prioritises territorial integrity and the restoration of central authority – an end result that runs counter to Israel’s desire for a fragmented regional safety panorama.
Greece and Cyprus, in the meantime, view the partnership as a method to advance maritime boundary claims and power corridors that will marginalise Turkiye’s position within the Japanese Mediterranean.
Safety and navy cooperation now kind a central pillar of the trilateral agenda, based on Muzaffer Senel, a visiting scholar of European research at Marmara College.
“All three actors have sought to create faits accomplis by way of unilateral initiatives within the area in what they collectively understand as a typical rival: Turkiye,” Senel instructed Al Jazeera in reference to potential safety and power preparations between the three nations that would threaten Ankara’s pursuits.
Israel’s gambit
The choice to carry the trilateral assembly in Israel was not incidental. It mirrored the shrinking diplomatic area obtainable to the Israeli management because the genocidal conflict on Gaza deepens Israel’s worldwide isolation.
With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu going through an arrest warrant from the Worldwide Felony Court docket (ICC) for conflict crimes and crimes towards humanity, his means to journey overseas has turn into more and more constrained, notably to nations which might be signatories to the courtroom, equivalent to Greece and Cyprus.
The Greek authorities, whereas not rejecting the ICC’s warrant for Netanyahu – which additionally consists of one for Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant – has mentioned that “these selections don’t assist”. Cyprus has additionally famous that the ICC warrants are binding. Neither has publicly mentioned that they won’t execute the warrants.
Internet hosting the Greek and Cypriot leaders in Israel was subsequently not merely a logistical selection, however a symptom of how authorized and diplomatic pressures are reshaping Israel’s outlook and pushing it in direction of security-centric alliances.
On the similar time, the assembly served to recast Turkiye as a regional drawback by way of coded Ottoman references and narratives of expansionist ambition, geared toward eroding Ankara’s pursuits within the Japanese Mediterranean.
Standing alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, Netanyahu – a longtime advocate of a Better Israel – warned that “those that fantasise they will re-establish their empires and their dominion over our lands” ought to “overlook it”, a comment extensively interpreted as a reference to Turkiye.
As a peninsular state, Turkiye has greater than 8,300km (5,100 miles) of shoreline. Greece argues its Aegean islands, lots of which lie simply off the Turkish coast, generate their very own unique financial zones (EEZ), extending maritime claims as much as 200 nautical miles (about 370km).
Ankara rejects this, saying islands can not create full EEZs and that borders needs to be drawn from the mainland.
Cyprus is one other flashpoint. After a Greek Cypriot coup in 1974, Turkiye intervened as a guarantor energy, splitting the island. Turkiye is the one nation to recognise the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. In 2004, the north backed a United Nations reunification plan, however the Greek-administered south rejected it, leaving the battle unresolved.
Within the Japanese Mediterranean, these regional wedge points have given Israel a possibility to insert itself and additional inflame tensions.
Greece, specifically, has sought to leverage Israel’s shut ties with Washington to safe diplomatic backing in longstanding maritime boundary disputes.
“Greece seeks to contain the US by way of Israel with a purpose to achieve diplomatic backing for resolving Japanese Mediterranean maritime boundary points,” mentioned Senel. These disputes – involving fuel exploration rights additionally claimed by Turkiye – have lengthy fuelled regional tensions and now kind a part of a broader effort to constrain Ankara’s strategic room for manoeuvre.
Whereas no formal collective defence settlement has been signed, high-level cooperation among the many three states is shifting past advert hoc coordination in direction of a extra institutionalised safety framework. The inclusion of america as a “like-minded associate” below a so-called 3+1 format, Senel famous, “clearly conveys a strategic message directed at Turkiye”.
Though the trilateral mechanism stops in need of a proper navy alliance, its trajectory factors in direction of deeper safety and defence cooperation, reinforcing Ankara’s notion of an rising containment axis within the japanese Mediterranean.
Rising anti-Turkiye axis
Relations between Greece, Cyprus and Israel haven’t been hindered by Israel’s genocidal conflict on Gaza, which started in October 2023.
Not like a number of different European Union states which have described Israel’s marketing campaign in Gaza as genocide or ethnic cleaning and known as for sanctions over violations of worldwide legislation, Greece and Cyprus have remained largely silent whereas increasing cooperation with Israel.
“Within the present context, the place the Greek Cypriots will assume the presidency of the Council of the EU, and at a time when the EU is ignoring Turkiye’s geostrategic place and significance, discovering diplomatic pathways to alleviate the tensions is a tough job,” mentioned Zeynep Alemdar, international coverage programme director on the Centre for Economics and International Coverage Research in Istanbul.
“EU officers don’t perceive the mutual advantages of together with Turkiye within the power and defence calculations of the area,” Alemdar instructed Al Jazeera.
In December, Greek parliamentarians accredited the acquisition of 36 PULS rocket artillery programs from Israel for roughly $760m.
The 2 nations are additionally advancing in direction of a serious defence settlement estimated at $3.5bn, below which Israeli defence companies would assemble a multi-layered air defence system for Greece.
In September 2025, Cyprus additionally obtained an Israeli-made air defence system costing tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, with additional deliveries anticipated.
“Turkiye will certainly attempt to dilute this coalition by way of diplomacy with its Center Japanese allies, but Israel’s disruption will proceed. Israel’s and Turkiye’s pursuits within the area will result in extra confrontations,” famous Alemdar.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mentioned that Turkiye “is not going to permit violations of its rights within the Aegean and the Mediterranean”, with out naming the three nations or referring on to their assembly.
Rear Admiral Zeki Akturk, the press and public relations adviser and spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence, sought to downplay the trilateral assembly, noting that it “doesn’t pose a navy risk to Turkiye”.
Turkiye, for its half, has additionally launched into its largest naval procurement course of, with a price ticket estimated at about $8bn and 31 ships within the means of being in-built 2025 alone to defend its pursuits within the Japanese Mediterranean.
The method has largely been pushed by skirmishes between Greece and Turkiye relationship again to 2020, when each events used naval property to put declare to conflicting financial zones, and when Ankara realised it wanted to take a position extra in its navy to keep away from being squeezed out of the Japanese Mediterranean.
Turkiye’s regional method
Analysts are additionally warning that Turkiye’s calibrated response to the trilateral assembly dangers underestimating a broader sample of Israeli provocations throughout a number of theatres.
From Syria to the Japanese Mediterranean – and, extra not too long ago, Somalia, following Israel’s recognition of the breakaway Somaliland area – Israel has demonstrated a willingness to take advantage of political fractures in ways in which undermine state consolidation.
In Syria, this method has been notably seen and feeds into Israel’s insurance policies within the Japanese Mediterranean. The Israeli bombing of the presidential palace and the Ministry of Defence in Damascus in July final yr was extensively seen as an try and weaken the Syrian authorities at a second of renewed diplomatic engagement.
Turkiye’s International Minister Hakan Fidan warned in December that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had been “in coordination with Israel” to impede Syria’s stabilisation.
A latest Al Jazeera Arabic investigation obtained hours of leaked audio recordings of senior navy officers from the regime of the ousted chief al-Assad, discussing plans to destabilise Syria and suggesting coordination with Israel.
Taken collectively, Israeli actions in Syria more and more resemble a template for oblique stress – not geared toward direct confrontation with Turkiye, however at constraining Ankara’s affect by entrenching instability alongside its southern flank.
In in search of to grind down Turkiye in Syria whereas advancing its naval technique within the Japanese Mediterranean, “the result’s a dual-pressure mannequin that exhausts and distracts Turkiye, turning every transfer into a possible disaster and steadily eroding its initiative”, mentioned the retired Turkish admiral Cem Gurdeniz.
Israeli recognition of Somaliland possible reinforces Turkiye’s concern that Israel is keen to legitimise breakaway coastal entities when doing so undercuts stabilisation efforts aligned with Turkiye’s maritime pursuits.
This method additionally finds help inside Israel’s ideological ecosystem. The precise-wing political theorist Yoram Hazony, a detailed ally of Netanyahu, has overtly argued for the fragmentation of regional states equivalent to Iraq and Syria into smaller entities organised alongside sectarian or communal traces – a imaginative and prescient that aligns with insurance policies privileging division over consolidation.
“Turkiye ought to cease treating this as episodic friction and deal with it as Israel’s deliberate try and form the post-Assad order in Syria whereas tightening a Mediterranean alignment that sidelines Ankara,” Andreas Krieg, affiliate professor of safety research at King’s Faculty London, instructed Al Jazeera.
“The response must be sensible, coercive within the political sense, and geared to outcomes relatively than signalling,” he added.
Turkiye has a monitor report of performing proactively when it believes its nationwide pursuits are at stake. In Libya, Ankara’s navy help for the internationally recognised authorities in 2020 prevented its collapse. Equally, Ankara’s backing of Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia helped tip the stability, enabling Baku to recapture territory occupied by Armenian forces.
Israeli threats to destabilise Syria, Somalia and Yemen may present Ankara with a gap with nations it has had rocky relations (since improved) with lately, primarily Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which more and more are additionally threatened by Israeli affect within the area and have most not too long ago condemned Israeli recognition of Somaliland.
Ankara mustn’t solely increase relations with such key Arab states, Krieg mentioned, it additionally must take sensible steps that make “various codecs commercially and strategically engaging”.
“Turkiye is not going to dismantle that [Eastern Mediterranean] axis with rhetoric,” he added.
“Ankara ought to expose and disrupt Israeli affect operations relatively than arguing about motives,” he warned, including that “the purpose is to make it politically costly for Israel to posture as a stabiliser whereas performing as a patron of breakaway buildings,” mentioned Krieg.
“The strategic threat for Turkiye is gradualism; [Ankara’s] goal needs to be express: stop a everlasting Israeli safety carve-out in southern Syria and forestall an Japanese Mediterranean order through which Ankara is boxed in,” Krieg concluded.