The Middle East Institute hosted an on-the-record webinar exploring Turkish-Israeli tensions in relation to Syria.
With the collapse of the Assad regime last December and Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s assumption of power in January, Syria has entered a precarious era, with both dangers and opportunities. Its trajectory will depend in part on neighboring Turkey’s and Israel’s interventions and competition for influence in Syrian affairs. Rising tensions between them raise the stakes of their respective objectives in Syria and whether the two sides may be reconciled in a way that is beneficial to Syria’s recovery post-Assad.
Our panel of experts will help us understand how Syria has become an arena for Turkish-Israeli rivalry, what role the United States could play in tamping down the hostilities between its two allies, and how this situation affects the stability and geostrategic trajectory of the broader region.
Speakers
Natan Sachs
Senior Fellow, Middle East Institute
Gönül Tol
Senior Fellow, Middle East Institute
Dr. Kenneth M. Pollack
Vice President for Policy, Middle East Institute
Extended Speaker Biographies
Natan Sachs is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, where he focuses on Israeli foreign policy and domestic politics. From 2012 to 2025, he served as a fellow, senior fellow, and for eight years, director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy. Dr. Sachs has testified before committees of the US Congress and other parliaments.
Gönül Tol is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, where she focuses on Turkish politics, US-Turkey relations, political Islam, and regional dynamics in the Middle East. She is the author of Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Dr. Kenneth M. Pollack is Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute. Previously he was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he worked on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries.