What Israel’s Doha Attack Means for Turkey + Hezbollah and the SDF/PKK disarmament tracks
Two issues this week: the AKP’s inner circle is palpably concerned about a direct clash with Israel, while Hezbollah and the SDF/PKK face stalled disarmament
Israel’s strike on Hamas officials in Doha, which left six dead according to Qatari authorities, was defended in Tel Aviv as ‘the punishment of terror leaders’ but registered across the region as a breach of sovereignty that directly endangered the fragile negotiations on hostages and a ceasefire. I don’t know about you, but I believe the latter is closer to the truth if we are speaking of consequences.
The Qatari prime minister declared that the attack had ‘killed any hope’ in the talks, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in an unusual alignment with Doha, condemned it as a violation of international norms. Statements of concern from European governments and the UN secretary-general followed. Hamas, for its part, insisted that its conditions remained unchanged, yet the venue of mediation itself now appeared compromised - and with it the diplomatic architecture that US and the UK had leaned on to contain the war.
For Turkey, the calculus is more delicate still. Erdoğan called Emir Tamim al Thani within hours and denounced the strike as an assault on Qatar’s sovereignty and offering solidarity. Meanwhile the pro-government press began to warn that the confrontation with Israel might move from the realm of conjecture to inevitability.
The expectation, sustained for months, or more aptly since October 7th, was that Turkey and Israel would not come to blows directly but would spar in Syria. And it was exactly what had been going on. Turkey’s the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan has accused Israel of meddling with sectarian and ethnic minorities, particularly of courting Kurdish actors in the northeast, precisely the groups with whom Turkey itself is locked in negotiation. That framework now looks less secure.
Why – because, by justifying the Doha attack on the grounds of Hamas’s presence, Netanyahu and Gallant have implied that the organization’s leaders are legitimate targets wherever they reside. Underscore wherever. Which must unsettle Turkey given that Hamas officials have long been received at the highest levels of the Turkish state.
The wider context only deepens the unease. Since the Arab uprisings, Turkey and Qatar have formed what they describe as a strategic partnership, aligned not only on Palestine but also on Syria and Libya. A relationship strengthened when Turkey came to Qatar’s aid during the embargo of 2017. Over the past decade, this partnership has been cemented not only in statecraft but in social habits and institutions too: the AKP’s nouveau riche frequent the luxury hotels of Doha – occasionally with their mistresses- , Turkish universities and cultural figures are embedded in the emirate, and Erdoğan’s book adorns the entrance of a library in one of the leading universities. An attack on Qatar, therefore, is not read in Ankara as an attack on a distant place but as a strike at an ally with whom Turkey’s fortunes are closely entwined.
The implication is clear enough. What was once regarded in Ankara as an annoying but manageable rivalry over influence in Syria — a theatre in which Israel sought leverage through minorities, Druzes and Kurds and Turkey sought to prevent it — is now reframed as the possible prelude to direct confrontation. Pro-government commentators have begun to treat a clash with Israel as a matter not of possibility but of timing, location and method.
As one commentator put it, ‘Ankara must begin to regard Israeli action—whether direct or by proxy—not as a distant improbability but as an imminent risk.’ And continues: ‘Ankara cannot treat the assault on Doha as a strike on a distant state without undermining the credibility of its own alliance. Just as it mounted an almost relief-operation in 2017 to break the blockade, Turkey is likely to move today with similar resolve. Erdoğan’s remarks following his conversation with the Qatari emir already point in that direction.’
Yani it is quite palpable that the Doha attack has forced the AKP’s inner circle to confront a reality it long sought to defer or considered far-fetched. The alignment with Hamas and the partnership with Qatar expose Turkey to the spillover of Israel’s widening campaign, and what once seemed a contest of influence in Syria may now carry the risk of a direct confrontation.
Two Disarmament Processes Stalled
Two parallel processes of disarmament and integration, both described at their inception as historic openings, are now visibly stalled. One concerns the Kurdish militant group PKK’s gradual disarmament and the fate of its Syrian offshoot, the PYD/SDF, which has been the subject of intermittent negotiations over its possible incorporation into the Syrian army. I have written before on this delicate equation. For now, however, the discussions between the SDF and the al-Sharra government have yielded no tangible results, and indeed the atmosphere has grown more brittle.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), known as Rojava, has announced that all schools in its territory will now be required to adopt a unified administration curriculum, discontinuing the material issued by Damascus. The consequence is to present families with an unenviable choice: either accept an unaccredited system or send their children beyond SDF-held areas in search of recognized schooling.
Reports indicate that enrolment in Rojava schools has risen by seventy per cent over the past year. Yet the demand only highlights the urgency of settling the educational portfolio between the two sides. It was precisely this issue that had seemed to move forward in March 10, when a deal signed by al-Sharra and SDF leader Mazlum Abdi. The deal had allowed for state certificate examinations to be held within SDF areas, thereby conferring at least a measure of recognition. But now the new announcement from Rojava rolls back that only positive step between two sides. Which means negotiations between the SDF and the al-Sharra government are not advancing; if anything, the mood has soured.
If this is the impasse in Syria, Lebanon provides another, no less fraught example. The government in Beirut, subject to American pressure and the accumulated violence of Israeli airstrikes, has directed the army to dismantle Hezbollah’s military presence south of the Litani River within three months. Foreign Minister Joe Rajji has publicly promised that by November there will remain no fighters, no weapons depots, no warehouses in the zone. The government’s plan envisages a phased disarmament extending gradually to the rest of the country.
Hezbollah, unsurprisingly, is not happy. It insists that any surrender of arms must be conditional on a complete Israeli withdrawal and credible assurances under the terms of last year’s ceasefire. Naim Qassem, the organisation’s deputy secretary-general and long-time second-in-command, declared in a recent speech that the Resistance (muqawama, i.e. Hezbollah) is Lebanon’s only defense against Israel. What the government describes as the long-postponed elaboration of a national security strategy, Hezbollah regards as an existential red line.
To this end, Hezbollah and its ally, the Amal movement, have demanded that the issue be referred to a national dialogue rather than implemented through immediate disarmament, a gesture the government interprets as little more than a delaying tactic. Yet the movement is not in a position to dictate much. Rarely in its history has Hezbollah appeared weaker: its supporter in Tehran under strain on all fronts, its own resources curtailed. Multiple reports suggest that the regular transfers from Iran that once sustained its budget have been reduced or halted, leaving the organisation increasingly dependent on the largesse of Lebanese businessmen based in Iraq, or even on cryptocurrency.
Both in Syria and in Lebanon, the disarmament processes have reached an impasse, showing how difficult it is to move armed groups into state structures when the political ground beneath them is so unsettled.
I agree the Doha strike imposes real diplomatic costs and complicates mediation and it also hardens Turkish threat perceptions because it normalizes extraterritorial targeting. But I am not sold on the immediacy of Türkiye–Israel kinetic confrontation yet. Because the incentives and constraints still push both Ankara and Jerusalem to signal and spar indirectly rather than shoot at each other directly. Israel hitting Türkiye requires long-range strikes into a NATO country with layered air defenses which would be a massive escalation and diplomatically radioactive. To hit Israel directly, Türkiye would need overflight or basing solutions and accept very high escalation risk. Far easier to pressure Syria/Eastern Med or via law enforcement/intelligence tools at home.
Trade between Israel and Turkey may have slowed, but it still continues in the background, the link is alive. The Doha strike shows that Israel is ready to act beyond Gaza, which increases the pressure on Turkey. At some point, Ankara will have to choose a side — and that moment is not far.