SEOUL, August 19 (AJP) - The justification Israel gave for bombing a Syrian airbase this week, that Turkish soldiers were about to deploy there, was rejected in full by Ankara on Wednesday, which called the allegations untenable and said their purpose was to make unlawful strikes appear legitimate.
Eight strikes hit the runway at the Abu al-Duhur airbase in eastern Idlib province early Tuesday, damaging runways and hangars without killing anyone, according to Syria's state broadcaster Ekhbariya, citing a military source.
The base lies about 70 kilometers east of the Turkish border and has not operated as a dedicated military airfield since 2013, having changed hands repeatedly during the civil war.
Israel said nothing for most of the day, and its military declined to comment, leaving the Turkish foreign ministry and Damascus to condemn an attack nobody had yet claimed. Ankara called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for disregarding international law, while Damascus called the strikes an act of aggression and a violation of the United Nations Charter.
Confirmation came instead from Washington, where Tom Barrack, the U.S. special envoy for Syria and Iraq who also serves as ambassador to Türkiye, said Israel had carried out the attack and called it an unnecessary escalation that did not advance regional stability.
The Israeli explanation arrived roughly 20 hours after the bombs fell, in an English statement posted on X by the Prime Minister's Office, which said Israel and Syria had agreed to a status quo in security matters that Syria was on the verge of breaching by permitting Turkish troops to deploy at an airbase near Aleppo, and that Damascus had ignored repeated warnings.
Turkish forces have been rebuilding Syria's army since Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, ending more than five decades of family rule.
The two defense ministers signed a training and consultancy memorandum in Ankara last August, Syrian cadets entered Turkish military academies that October, and Syrian troops joined multinational exercises in western Türkiye in May, all of it at the invitation of the government in Damascus.
Israeli forces hold their own ground in Syria without that invitation, occupying positions inside the buffer zone patrolled by the United Nations on the Golan Heights and on Mount Hermon since December 2024, taken after Netanyahu declared the 1974 disengagement agreement void. Damascus wants them gone as a condition for any security arrangement, and Defense Minister Israel Katz has said they will stay.
Türkiye's Directorate of Communications answered the following day. "The untenable allegations put forward by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office are intended to legitimise Israel's unlawful airstrikes targeting Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the statement said.
Ankara did not stop at denial but tied the accusations to Israeli domestic politics, saying they stem from Netanyahu's intent to pursue expansionist and destabilising policies in the region ahead of the elections in Israel, where voters go to the polls on October 27, the last date the law allows.
Barrack, for his part, said the strike reflected a perception, accurate or misplaced, that Türkiye might soon expand its presence at the base, and that Washington is working to build a deconfliction channel linking Israel, Syria and Türkiye.
"The sole path to this objective lies in Netanyahu's abandonment of his aggressive and coercive policies and in his respect for international law," Ankara's statement said.
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