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United States President Donald Trump on April 7 offered to act as a mediator between Israel and Turkey to help solve their recent disagreement over Syria.
Speaking alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Trump said that his “great relations” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could help kick off such talks.
Turkey is the main backer of Islamists-led forces that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad last December in a lighting large-scale offensive. Since then, Ankara has been working to build a strategic alliance with the interim government in Damascus.
Acknowledging Turkey’s dominance in Syria, Trump revealed that he told Erdogan he had “taken it over through surrogates.”
“I said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve done what nobody’s been able to do in 2,000 years. You’ve taken over Syria.’ With different names, but same thing,” Trump told reporters.
“I told the [Israeli] prime minister, I said, ‘Bibi, if you have a problem with Turkey, I really think I’m going to be able to work it out,’” the president continued, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
“You know, I have a very, very good relationship with Turkey and with their leader, and I think we’ll be able to work it out,” he added. “As long as you are reasonable, you have to be reasonable.”
From his side, Netanyahu voiced Israeli concerns over Turkish influence in Syria while touting the US president as a mediator.
“We’ve had neighborly relations with Turkey that have deteriorated, and we don’t want to see Syria being used by anyone, including Turkey, as a base for attack in Israel,” Netanyahu said.
“We discussed how we can avoid this conflict in a variety of ways, and I think we can’t have a better interlocutor than the president of the U.S. for this purpose,” he added.
Turkey’s attempts to build a strategic alliance with Syria, reportedly including a defensive pact, caused serious worries in Israel, which has embarked on a military operation to destroy the military capabilities of the war-torn country since the fall of the Assad regime.
In recent weeks, Israeli strikes hit three air bases in central Syria, T4, Palmyra and Hama, which were scouted by the Turkish military for possible deployment, according to a recent report by Reuters. Another report by the Middle East Eye said that Ankara was planning to deploy air defenses and combat drones in the region.
Israel does not appear to be enthusiastic about a confrontation with Turkey in Syria, but it is certainly preparing for such a scenario.
Meanwhile, Trump is still not showing any real interest in Syria and appears to be willing to give Turkey full control over the country as long as U.S. interests there are preserved.
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