US envoy warns Israel on Syria base attack near Turkish border

Taylan Bilgic, Bloomberg News on Aug 22, 2026

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President Donald Trump’s envoy for Syria and Iraq issued a stern warning after Israel’s recent strike on a long-shuttered military base near the Turkish border, invoking the downing of a Russian jet more than a decade ago that escalated regional tensions.

Raising the possibility that Israel was baiting Turkey with the Aug. 18 airstrikes in northern Syria, Ambassador Tom Barrack, in a YouTube interview with podcast host Mario Nawfal, termed it a “dangerous game.”

“If you remember, the Turks took out a Russian jet under the same kind of circumstances,” Barrack said. “Very dangerous game, having jets deployed on the border without notification, without some agreement.”

In November 2015, Turkish F-16s downed a Russian Su-24 bomber over the border with Syria, an incident that proved to be the toughest test of Ankara’s relations with Moscow since the Cold War. Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s prime minister at the time, who later said he’d given the order to shoot down the plane, left office less than a year later. The countries’ relationship was put back on track after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized in a letter to Russia’s Vladimir Putin in June 2016.

The Abu al-Duhur military air base in Syria had been out of service since 2012, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a security source who wasn’t identified. There was no Turkish military presence at the base before or during the attack, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said.

Barrack earlier voiced “deep concern” about the incident in a post on X, saying the airstrikes “constitute an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.”

On Friday, foreign ministers of 12 countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia condemned the Israeli attack in a joint statement. Devlet Bahceli, the nationalist ally of Erdogan, suggested the establishment of an “Islamic Peace Force” against Israel.

Turkey is “not interested in attacking or even engaging in any kind of kinetic or adversarial relationship with Israel,” Barrack said in the interview. However, he warned that “the unintended consequence of a mistake could be really consequential.”