Syria’s second civil war: Turkey and Israel’s strategic contest for influence
The dénouement of Bashar al-Assad’s rule in late 2024 did not mark the end of Syria’s fragmentation. Instead, it ushered in a new cycle of decentralized disorder. Hopes for recovery quickly dissolved as the state’s bureaucratic and security institutions collapsed, exacerbating rather than resolving the country’s communal and military atomization.
What remained of unified political representation splintered into rival constellations of sectarian, militia and international patronage, each operating under its own security logic. In this chaotic vacuum, Turkey and Israel have re-engaged, translating Syria’s power void into a contest of occupied sovereign space, masked by counterterrorism and humanitarian rhetoric.
Competing foreign agendas
In the shifting strategic landscape of post-Assad Syria, both countries have consolidated their positions in what many now refer to as Syria’s “second civil war”—a reconfiguration of violence in which domestic forces have become subordinate to competitive regional designs. Despite diverging styles and strategic end goals, Turkey and Israel have emerged as the leading external powers, influencing both territorial reconfigurations and institutional developments in Syria’s new order.
Ankara’s engagement is both pervasive and systematic. By merging troop contingents, administrative structuring and backing of militia units, Turkey has transformed de facto zones in northern Syria into quasi-vice-regencies. Turkish policy appears driven by three primary goals: to inhibit, through direct intervention, any consolidation of a Kurdish self-governing enclave along the southern border; to orchestrate the organized, albeit selective, return of Syrian refugees under a Turkish oversight apparatus; and, ultimately, to lay the foundations of a post-Assad settlement conforming to Ankara’s strategic calculus and its pan-Islamist conception of regional order.
Within these zones, Ankara has inserted substitutive governance networks, dispersing gendarmeries, judge panels and municipal advisory bodies that are underpinned by Turkish parliamentary appropriations. Concurrently, the circulation of the Turkish lira and the promulgation of Turkish-language curricula illustrate an integration that transcends influence, resembling statecraft more than temporary occupation.
By contrast, Israel pursues a policy of indirect intervention aimed principally at threat containment, rather than seizing territory. The cornerstone of its strategy rests on the covert bolstering of non-state proxies—predominantly Druze militias stationed in southern Syria and select Kurdish units positioned in the northeast—in order to prevent a hostile power, especially Iran or a revived Syrian army, from re-establishing comprehensive control over the territory.
Israeli airstrikes persistently target Iranian military installations, while discreet diplomatic engagement fosters ties with Syrian and regional actors whose security orientations broadly coincide with Israeli requirements. The result is a calibrated approach of “managed decentralization”: a deliberately induced dispersion of territorial authority that, from Jerusalem’s perspective, diminishes the likelihood of an overarching, coordinated threat and minimizes the risk of a synchronized eruption of hostilities along the northern borders.
A fractured political landscape
While no formal partition has yet been pronounced, Syria is effectively divided into several semi-autonomous governance regions. The northeastern quarter is under the stewardship of Kurdish-led authorities; the northwestern sectors fall to overlapping Turkish-backed militias; the southern district, centered on Suwayda, is progressively self-governing under implicit Israeli support; and the coastal zone, long an Alawite-dominated area, now remains politically inactive and economically sealed off.
Each of these sectors manifests its own administrative framework, internal security apparatus and prevailing economic order. Their frontiers have solidified not by the auspices of treaty law but by the cumulative force of territorial administration, sectarian identity, security imperatives and a stark vacuum of competent national governance. The assumed government in Damascus retains a shadow of authority confined to the capital and its neighboring hinterland.
Although external powers continue to influence Syria’s trajectory after Assad, domestic political dynamics exert persistent leverage. Local governance entities have scaled up, notably within Kurdish, Druze and Sunni Arab settlements. Tribal groups remain activeIn Deir ez-Zor; in Idlib, Islamist coalitions persist, while fragments of the former Syrian opposition continue to articulate contestable mandates in the south.
Some of these groups cooperate with foreign patrons; others resist foreign impositions altogether. An instructive characteristic of the ongoing phase of conflict is that Syrian protagonists behave neither as neutral instruments nor as uniform proxies.
Legacy actors recalibrate
Even as Turkey and Israel now dominate the foreign policy landscape in Syria, the influence of Russia and Iran—once the key players of the Assad regime—has not entirely disappeared from the equation. Russia retains a strategic foothold in Latakia, maintains the Hmeimim Air Base and manages the Tartus facility. Yet, Moscow’s simultaneous commitments in Ukraine and selected African theaters have limited its bandwidth for decisive, long-term influence in a future Syrian order.
Iran’s standing, meanwhile, has eroded under persistent Israeli strike campaigns and the partial redeployment of its Shia militia clients. That said, it still operates a mosaic of proxy forces, including a reduced Hezbollah contingent and foreign fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. While their numbers have diminished, such formations retain the capability to disrupt stabilization efforts or to recalibrate their deployments should the regional strategic environment shift towards confrontation.
Arab normalization and quiet diplomacy
A significant yet often ignored facet of Syria’s continuing fragmentation involves the position of Arab states, particularly the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, among others, have resumed formal relations with the transitional regime in Damascus, aiming to curtail the expanding reaches of Iranian and Turkish influence while re-establishing a degree of Arab authority in the eastern Levant.
Simultaneously, Jordan has adopted a discreet stabilizing posture along the southern frontier, engaging in confidential mediation among Israel, Druze leaders and remnants of the Syrian military. Although these normalization initiatives have not altered the fundamental structure of Syria’s fragmentation, they may offer a diplomatic framework on which future stabilization initiatives could be constructed—or at the very least, they may forestall the further collapse of the Syrian state.
Demographic reengineering and the politics of return
Meanwhile, one of the war’s most decisive and lasting outcomes is the alteration of Syria’s demographic composition. Turkey’s resettlement of Syrian refugee populations into the northern zones it administers has been characterized by critics as demographic engineering, masking a strategy of replacing Kurdish constituencies with Sunni Arab groups deemed politically loyal.
Similar trends are occurring elsewhere in the country, often with the tacit acquiescence—if not, encouragement—of external patrons. Collectively, such operations are producing a Syria that is not only governed by rival authorities but is also subjected to intentional ethnic and sectarian reconfiguration.
The slow collapse of sovereignty
The country’s fragmentation extends well beyond Syrian borders, indicating the progressive disintegration of the post-Westphalian order across the Fertile Crescent. The principle of state sovereignty, already weakened by a succession of external interventions, is being supplanted by a modified form of indirect control: governance via proxies that stops short of formal annexation. Turkey and Israel, for instance, impose authority over selected territories without openly claiming them; the resulting spheres of governance more closely resemble imperial protectorates than classical foreign military occupations, thereby reconstituting the region’s constitutional and geopolitical boundaries without invoking outright annexation.
Conclusion: Controlled disintegration as doctrine
If the Syrian model is reproduced, the region may enter an era in which weaker states function as laboratories for informal empire and diplomacy is replaced by strategic classification. In this context, Syria stands as both an experimental case study and a cautionary tale.
The second chapter of Syria’s civil war reveals an enduring geopolitical truth: the failure of fragile polities under external pressure rarely resolves violence; instead, it formalizes chaos. The competing designs of Turkey and Israel point to a wider pattern, where formal sovereignty gives way to security imperatives and strategic influence is secured by proxies.
What is clear, however, is that the Syrian crisis has entered a new chapter—defined not by revolution or counterrevolution, but by the slow, deliberate architecture of fragmentation.
The Armenians who still remain in the new Turkish-ruled Islamist Syria, need to get out of there ASAP. There is no future for Armenians and other non-Sunni Muslim and non-Arab minorities in that country, especially when Islamists and their master Erdogan are calling the shots. After the Syrian Civil War started (which was also instigated by Erdogan, among other imperialist players), the large majority of Armenians and Christians fled Syria, likely never to return (just like the large majority of Armenians, Christians and Yazidis, who fled post-Saddam Iraq, when it descended into sectarian violence and civil war conditions). They could soon be joined by the Alawite Muslims (Assads’ sect) and the Druze, who are already attacked and persecuted by the Islamists. And it is always possible that the civil war can reignite in Syria (like it did in post-Ghaddafi Libya, which is now split into two enemy camps, again with Erdogan’s interference). Optimism is a foolishness and optimists are fools in this part of the world, especially when Islamists are in the picture, as well as major powers and regional powers (like Turkey) who interfere and instigate conflicts. The pessimists who fled, survived; the optimists who stayed, often were killed – either intentionally or as “collateral damage”.
The Syrian former polity was created by Anglo-French colonial policies post WW1. It never represented Syrian interests, at most those of a segment (e.g. Allawi). Turkish policy is confiscatory, turning Syrian land into Turkish territory. Not good for Syrians, not for Qurds, not for Yazidis, not for Druze, not for Allawi, not for Armenians, and in the end not good for Sunni. The Israeli policy is support and protection for tribes having long history in place. The rational outcome of the Israeli policy i, s eventual configuration of a neo-Syria based on a Federation of tribal Cantons. Such a Federation could actually work, as its assets would be less squandered on war, the presumed eventual central government’s main objectives to be using politics and funds to keep inter-canton tensions very low. As this would also be in Israel’s interests, Israel would help in any way practical, not merely militarily.