How Türkiye has reacted to the Israel-Iran 12-Day War

Ankara watched and learned from events in June 2025, as missiles flew between Tel Aviv and Tehran. The Middle East is changing, as is the nature of warfare and intelligence. For Türkiye, it is time to act.

Israeli air defence systems intercept Iranian missiles over Tel Aviv on June 18, 2025.
AFP
Israeli air defence systems intercept Iranian missiles over Tel Aviv on June 18, 2025.

How Türkiye has reacted to the Israel-Iran 12-Day War

For decades, Türkiye’s secular establishment viewed Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a cautionary tale. When Ruhollah Khomeini, returned to hijack the spirit of revolution that overthrew the Shah and thereafter change the course of Iran’s, future, Türkiye was watching. Alongside the spectre of Kurdish separatism, Ankara saw political Islam as an existential threat. Tehran’s bid to export political Islam via ideological proxies clashed with Ankara’s vision of order for the Middle East.

While often described as “frenemies,” both Iran and Türkiye recognise that a zero-sum contest for regional dominance is not sustainable. They have competed for influence in both Iraq and Syria. Iraqi Kurdistan is an area where Iran and Türkiye have indirectly clashed through local factions, as Türkiye fights Kurdish separatists.

In Syria, the two states backed opposing sides since the outbreak of the uprising there in 2011, with Iran’s intervention in the early stages of the uprising proving pivotal to keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power for another decade.

Yet it was Türkiye that had the last laugh. It supported anti-Assad factions in the north, based in Idlib, and those fighters—led by Ahmed al-Sharaa and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—launched their assault in November last year, quickly clearing regime forces from Syria’s major cities, before finally arriving in Damascus virtually unopposed two weeks later, as Assad’s army fled.

Impact of Iran defeat

Both Iraq and Syria are home to sizeable Kurdish populations, and Ankara has long accused Iran of covertly mobilising separatist groups against Türkiye. Yet this bad blood does not mean that Türkiye and Iran are at daggers drawn.

Adem Altan/AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) with Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi at a joint press conference in Ankara on January 24, 2024. The pair have strained ties.

They share a 560km border and have interdependencies, relying on each other in areas such as gas exports. Some think Türkiye may have benefited from Israeli and American strikes against Iran last month, but for Turkish leaders, the implications are sobering.

Ankara has little to gain from a fragmented Iran, especially if it is engulfed by ethnic insurgencies that trigger a wave of refugees. Ankara will also feel uneasy at Washington’s decision to engage in direct military action in the Middle East in support of Israel. Even though Türkiye is a NATO member and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoys a close relationship with President Trump, there is an overarching concern that the US is fully behind Israel’s unilateral militarism in the region since October 2023.

Ankara has little to gain from a fragmented Iran, especially if it is engulfed by ethnic insurgencies that trigger a wave of refugees

At a more practical level, Iran's momentary weakness could let Türkiye expand its own military deterrence capabilities, while re-emphasising its own diplomatic, trade and geopolitical relevance. Turkish defence planners are likely to have dissected Iran's air defence vulnerabilities, the way it hit back against Israel, and Israel's intelligence penetration. It could prompt Ankara to reinforce its counterintelligence capabilities and review the security of its most strategic assets.

Reinforcing capabilities

The 12-day Israel-Iran conflict turbocharged Türkiye's ambitions to advance its indigenous ballistic missile programme. On 20 June, President Erdogan announced plans to develop its medium and long-range missile capabilities. Its short-range hypersonic ballistic missile, the Tayfun, is thought to have a range between 280km and 800km. The Tayfun was test fired in February, launched from Rize-Artvin Airport on the Black Sea coast. Post-launch analysis suggested its range exceeded the 560km range of the previous test.

Türkiye continues to emphasise the strategic value of its domestically-produced defence systems, framing indigenous production as a key competitive advantage. It has also accelerated efforts to rejoin the US-led F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme after a long hiatus, even though this would require Ankara to potentially deactivate or offload its Russian S-400 aid defence system, purchased in 2019.

AFP
A Russian military cargo plane, carrying S-400 missile defence system from Russia, during its unloading at the Murted military airbase, northwest of Ankara.

The recent 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran will have reinforced the imperative for Türkiye to invest in its own deterrent power and operational readiness, not least because Israel wants to capitalise on its recent military gains by reshaping the regional balance of power. This has not gone unnoticed in Ankara.

Kurds and Syria

With Syria's Interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa still struggling to assert full territorial control seven months after taking power, Israel has positioned itself as a protector of Syria's minority groups—most notably the Druze in the southwestern Quneitra region (with whom it shares cross-border communal ties) and the Kurds in the north-east, whose autonomy claims have long been a point of regional contention.  

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said in December 2024 that he had "stressed the international community's responsibility to the Kurds" in his calls with world leaders, highlighting "the sacrifices made by the Kurds in their fight against ISIS". He further warned of "the dangers of dismantling Kurdish autonomy".

The 12-day war will have reinforced the imperative for Türkiye to invest in its own deterrent power and operational readiness

Since last October, nationalist Turkish politician and coalition partner Devlet Bahçeli has publicly backed an initiative to end the four-decade-long insurgency waged by the outlawed Kurdish separatist group, the PKK. There has been tentative progress, and Ankara is keen for more, because neutralising the threat posed by the PKK and its affiliates remains a top national security priority.

It appears to be working. In a rare video statement released on 9 July, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, reiterated his call for the end of armed resistance against Turkey and a transition to democratic politics. While highly anticipated, the visual evidence of Ocalan's words will reverberate across the ranks of the PKK and its offshoots in the region.

Mezopotamya News/Reuters
Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, is seen with the other jailed PKK members in the prison island of Imrali, Turkey, in this undated picture released July 9, 2025.

An inaugural and symbolic 'laying down arms' ceremony is expected to take place within days in northern Iraq. Ankara's effective implementation of the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) process will alter the balance of power with Iran, undercutting Iran's efforts to leverage armed PKK fighters to destabilise or distract Turkey.

At the same time, the process may catalyse PJAK (a Kurdish nationalist anti-Iranian armed militant group) to pursue a different tack inside Iran, especially if Tehran's military and political command structure appears to be weakening.

Fighting for dominance

This is part of a broader calculus, one in which Türkiye seeks to assert itself as the principal actor shaping the region's future, particularly during Syria's political transition. Its main rival for the title of regional powerbroker would now be Israel. Within that dynamic, the Kurds in Syria will play a key role.

Yasir Akgul/AFP
Supporters display a poster of the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan. PKK disarmament is a Turkish national security priority.

Represented by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), they have been supported by Washington for the past decade, partners in the war against Islamic State. Ankara sees the militias attached to the SDF as the extension of the PKK, while Israel may see them as useful bulwark. Within that context, Israel has endorsed Kurdish autonomy in Syria.

As one of the Middle East's longest-running counterterrorism campaigns edges toward a possible end with the full disarmament of the PKK, important lessons are being drawn about the evolving character of warfare, with Israel's intelligence-led operations against Iran and its proxy forces likely to become case studies.

As regional actors look to strengthen their own capacities, they will seek to better predict, pre-empt, and respond to the spectrum of tactics Israel may employ in the future—including sophisticated intelligence gathering, disinformation campaigns, and psychological operations. In asymmetric warfare, intelligence is a force multiplier: it enables the selection of precise, high-value targets, and shapes the narrative. Future conflicts will be defined as much by innovative and covert intelligence operations as by conventional firepower. And Ankara knows it.

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