Replay the scene. A Turkish minister, in Damascus, invokes "Syria's sovereign right to ensure security on its own territory"... about a base where his own country was the one trying to move in. What Fidan was defending on Sunday was not Syrian sovereignty. It was Ankara's right to Syrian skies.
A Turkish minister, in Damascus, invokes "Syria's sovereign right to ensure security on its own territory"...
That is what this visit reveals: post-Assad Syria is not primarily the theater of an Israeli-Syrian conflict, but of a contest between Israel and Turkey. Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian military infrastructure and deployed troops in the buffer zone on the edge of the Golan. Jerusalem's red line does not target the new Syrian government as such: it targets the entrenchment of a hostile regional power on its northern flank. Fidan, for his part, came to file Ankara's application for the role of guardian: energy, trade, a "comprehensive strategic document," an announced Erdogan visit.
And Damascus? Shaibani speaks in two registers, and both must be read precisely. On Sunday he called the strike a "message of sabotage" with "no legitimate or legal justification," and described Syrian-Turkish relations as "optimal." But on August 23, five days after that same strike, it was he who met the head of the Mossad in Jordan to defuse the tension. And on Sunday again, he reaffirmed the choice of diplomacy, "deeply aware of the cost of wars." This is not cynicism: it is the position of a fragile state that wants Turkish protection without a war with Israel.
For Israel, this is both good news and a trap. The good news: Damascus talks to the Mossad and does not want to fight. The trap: every visible Israeli move — Netanyahu's visit on Wednesday to troops deployed on the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, denounced by Damascus as a "provocation" — hands Fidan his talking points and nudges Shaibani one notch closer to Ankara. Securing the northern flank requires striking the Turkish project. It equally requires not turning Damascus into Turkey's dependent. It all comes down to calibration.
One detail remains, reported everywhere and read nowhere. Fidan announced an upcoming Erdogan visit to Syria "without a date having been set." A month after Abu al-Duhur, there are no Turkish troops on the base, Ankara swears there will be none, and Damascus keeps its channel to Jerusalem open. In other words, the August 18 strike has already had its effect, and Sunday's speech is the verbal response to it. Fidan uttered a sentence. Israel drew a line. The day Erdogan's visit gets a date, we will know whether that line holds.
