The Israel-Turkey Power Struggle in Gaza

Israel's rejection of Turkish participation in any international deconfliction force in Gaza reflects a deeper geopolitical struggle extending from northern Iraq to the Horn of Africa. While Turkey seeks to expand its influence through a combination of military power and Islamic diplomacy, Israel works to limit this role to preserve its security hegemony in the region.

In this context, Gaza represents both a central and symbolic arena in this competition for regional leadership of ongoing US-Arab peace efforts.

Turkey's Expanding Regional Footprint

Over the past decade, Turkey has expanded its regional military presence across scattered areas of the Middle East and North Africa, viewed by some as an attempt to rebuild its historical sphere of influence.

In northern Iraq, Ankara maintains bases and operations centers to counter the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), justifying this presence as a preemptive defense of Turkish national security. In Syria, Turkish forces are deployed in northern regions under the banner of "buffer zones," but effectively constitute a permanent sphere of influence to limit Kurdish cross-border connectivity. In Libya, Turkey strengthened its presence by supporting the Tripoli government, establishing bases in Misrata and Al-Watiya to expand its presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In Qatar, Turkey established a permanent military base embodying the political alliance between the two countries, while in Somalia, Camp Turksom, is Turkey's largest overseas base training Somali army units and monitoring strategic maritime passages in the Horn of Africa. Ankara also maintains some influence in Sudan through arms relationships and leasing of Suakin island in the Red Sea, though not yet utilized. Through this network, Turkey has established a geographic presence extending from the Black Sea to the Horn of Africa, employing soft power tools like foreign aid, military assistance, and education alongside its doctrine of Islamic Diplomacy.

Israel's Competing Network of Influence

On the parallel side, Israel does not deploy its army on foreign land but builds influence through technology, intelligence, and economic alliances that expand its regional security doctrine. In Iraqi Kurdistan, strong Israeli cooperation with Erbil counters Turkish forces located in Dohuk and Zab, making the region a sensitive intelligence contact zone. Similarly in Northeastern Syria, Tel Aviv has increasingly expressed support for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), viewing them as a potential secular counterbalance to Turkish-backed Islamist groups and as a means to disrupt Iranian influence corridors; though this support remains largely diplomatic and rhetorical rather than formalized military cooperation. In the Horn of Africa, Israel has developed security partnerships with countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, with a particular focus on counterterrorism cooperation and arms sales. South Sudan, which Israel supported during its independence struggle, maintains especially close ties with Tel Aviv and consistently joins Israel in international forums. Reports also suggest Israeli intelligence operations in Eritrea's Dahlak Archipelago to monitor Iranian activities in the Red Sea, though this remains largely unconfirmed.

This geopolitical convergence across contested zones has transformed Ankara and Tel Aviv into zero-sum competitors, with each viewing the other's regional expansion as a direct threat to its own security architecture, a rivalry that persists, despite billions in annual bilateral trade that neither side is willing to sacrifice.

Gaza: A Contested Peace Agreement

For Turkey, Gaza transcends humanitarian concerns and it serves as a potent political and religious symbol through which Ankara asserts its leadership in the Islamic world. Erdoğan has repeatedly invoked Gaza as “the conscience of the nation”, while Turkey has provided sanctuary to numerous Hamas leaders and operatives, offering the movement sustained financial assistance and development projects in Gaza.

For Israel, Gaza constitutes a critical security perimeter integral to its defensive doctrine. Tel Aviv perceives any Turkish military or security presence in Gaza as presenting a twofold threat. Operationally, it would establish Turkish intelligence capabilities directly on Israel's southwestern border, creating vulnerabilities in a traditionally volatile frontier; strategically, it would elevate Ankara to the role of legitimate arbiter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, undermining Israel's decades-long effort to maintain exclusive security control over Gaza's future.

Israel moved decisively to exclude Turkey from the proposed International Stabilization Force, securing American, Egyptian, and Gulf backing for this position. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar articulated the rationale stating "Ankara's open alignment with Hamas and refusal to designate it as a terrorist organization disqualifies Turkey from any peacekeeping role", a position that reflects not merely policy disagreement but a fundamental incompatibility of strategic interests. 

Regional power dynamics prove equally significant. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have long viewed Turkey's support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood with suspicion, seeing Ankara's embrace of political Islam as a challenge to their autocratic systems and a potential threat to regime stability. These tensions peaked during the 2017 Saudi-Qatari crisis when Gulf states demanded Doha sever ties with the Brotherhood and cease to expand Ankara’s influence in the region. Yet on Gaza specifically, the calculus shifted: all four countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Turkey, issued a joint statement supporting the U.S. resolution for the international force, suggesting pragmatic convergence despite underlying ideological fault lines. Their hesitation centers not on Turkish participation per se, but on whether Hamas will disarm, a prerequisite Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE established before committing their own forces. This reflects a recalibration where the Turkey-Qatar versus Egypt-Saudi-UAE rivalry over political Islam remains structurally intact, yet Gaza's strategic importance has compelled tactical cooperation that would have been unthinkable during the height of regional polarization.

The question on Turkey’s role in Gaza exposes deeper friction within the US-Israel relationship that transcends the immediate Gaza peace agreement context. Washington credited Ankara with using its Hamas connections to pressure the group into accepting the ceasefire, a recognition that reflects American pragmatism about Turkish military capacity as valuable for burden-sharing in a region where US forces will not deploy on the ground. Yet, Tel Aviv views any dilution of its security doctrine as an existential threat, creating a fundamental impasse between allies.

Washington's calculation extends beyond Turkey's diplomatic channels. US Treasury designations have identified Turkey as a central hub for Hamas financial operations, with the organization managing assets worth over half a billion dollars through Turkish banks, real estate companies, and currency exchanges, a network overseen by figures like Zaher Jabarin, head of Hamas's finance department operating from Istanbul. This grants Ankara unique leverage in Gaza precisely because of control over remaining Hamas financial lifelines and hosting its senior leadership, while it provides Washington with pressure mechanisms unavailable through military means alone.

Israel's objection to Ankara’s involvement in Gaza thus represents more than security concerns about Turkish troops. It reflects Tel Aviv's recognition that Turkish participation would formalize Ankara's role as a power broker with operational control over mechanisms that sustain Hamas, the same mechanisms that Israel has spent two years attempting to destroy in Gaza.

Competition Beyond Gaza

The Turkey-Israel rivalry extends beyond territorial presence into the strategic domain of energy security, where control over Eastern Mediterranean hydrocarbons and export routes constitutes a parallel battleground with direct implications for European energy policy.

The EastMed pipeline project, a proposed 1,900-kilometer undersea route connecting Israeli and Cypriot gas fields to Greece while deliberately bypassing Turkish territory, represents this competition. Signed by Greece, Cyprus, and Israel in January 2020 with initial US backing, the project aimed to transport 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to European markets. Turkey's Foreign Ministry condemned the accord, expressing concerns for any hydrocarbon infrastructure in the region without Ankara's involvement, and deployed research vessels accompanied by warships for seismic surveys in disputed waters near Cyprus.

The project has since stalled due to technical challenges, prohibitive costs estimated at €6 billion, and sustained Turkish opposition leading to temporarily halting trade with Israel in 2024 in protest of the war in Gaza. Ankara has since proposed an alternative to route Israeli gas through Turkish territory to Europe, a configuration that would grant Turkey gatekeeping authority over Israeli energy exports.

The Gaza conflict intersects with these energy dynamics in ways that compound Israel's strategic calculus. Any Turkish presence in Gaza would position Ankara adjacent to the sought after Levantine Basin's offshore reserves of natural gas, potentially complicating Israeli extraction operations and reinforcing Turkey's claim that regional energy architecture requires its participation. For Israel, excluding Turkey from Gaza's security arrangements thus serves a dual purpose: maintaining tactical military control while preventing Ankara from establishing proximity to energy assets that underpin Israel's long-term economic security and its alternative to Turkish-controlled export routes.

This energy dimension reframes the Gaza dispute beyond immediate security concerns about Hamas disarmament or humanitarian governance, with competing visions for regional security order. Control over Gaza's perimeter overlaps with control over offshore logistics and the infrastructure that monetizes it.

Conclusion

Israel's veto of Turkish participation in Gaza's stabilization force ultimately transcends the immediate question of peacekeeping in the Middle East. It represents a collision between incompatible regional projects: Turkey's bid to reclaim Islamic world leadership through a synthesis of military projection and religious symbolism, and Israel's determination to preserve Western-backed security hegemony built on technological superiority and intelligence networks.

Gaza has become the arena where these competing visions converge, not because of its strategic value alone, but because control over its future governance signals broader authority to shape regional order. Turkey's leverage over Hamas financial architecture and leadership, combined with its expanding military footprint from Libya to Somalia, positions Ankara as a credible alternative power broker to Qatar and Arab states. Israel views this not as a partnership opportunity but as an existential challenge directly competing with Tel Aviv's decades-long monopoly over Israeli-Palestinian conflict management.

The real struggle, therefore, is not about reconstruction logistics or humanitarian oversight in Gaza. It is about which model will define the post-conflict Middle East's power structure, and whether Gaza's future will be determined through Israeli security doctrine or negotiated through competing regional stakeholders. Washington's endorsement of Ankara's mediating role, despite Tel Aviv's objections, suggests this question remains unresolved, and that the Turkey-Israel rivalry over Gaza prefigures broader contests for regional primacy that will outlast any single peace agreement.