Turkey's National Intelligence Academy has released a report titled "The Anatomy of Israeli Expansionism". A key assessment in the report is that Israel's relations with Greece and the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus in the fields of security, energy and politics have evolved into a strategy aimed directly at encircling Turkey.
The study examines Israel's expansionist policies in their historical, ideological, political and military dimensions and addresses their impact on regional security. The report also examines Israel's pursuit of regional hegemony, the role of US support in this process, the risks arising for Turkey and the strategies that could be pursued.
In the foreword, Academy President Prof. Dr. Talha Köse argued that Israel's actions in Gaza, which he described as amounting to genocide, the transformation of the occupation of the West Bank into administrative annexation, and expansionism in Lebanon and Syria were creating instability on a global scale. Köse said Israel's expansion efforts stretching from Syria to the Eastern Mediterranean and from the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa had effectively brought the two-state solution, seen as key to lasting peace in the region, to a dead end. According to Köse, while Turkey's security approach rests on strengthening the sovereignty, territorial integrity and institutional capacity of regional states, Israel builds its security policy on keeping surrounding actors weak, fragmented and open to intervention.
The report described the Eastern Mediterranean as one of the most institutionalised arenas of competition. It noted that this cooperation centred on defence, technology and connectivity has evolved into a broader network with the participation of countries such as the United Arab Emirates and India, and that the structure aims to narrow Turkey's room for manoeuvre and make rapprochement with Turkey costly.
In the section on Israel's military power, the report stated that the country's military and technological capacity allows it to conduct operations in distant regions but is insufficient to wage a prolonged, high-intensity war on its own. The report stated that the US/Israel-Iran War showed that Israel is structurally dependent on the US to sustain its military capacity, and stressed that the backlash caused by developments in Gaza, particularly among younger generations in the US, has made the future of support for Israel uncertain.
The report argued that Israel's capacity to intervene in the region stems not only from its military presence but also from social and identity-based vulnerabilities. In this context, it said the "Terror-Free Turkey and Terror-Free Region" process should be seen as a strategic element of resilience strengthening ties between Turkish, Kurdish and Arab communities, and that the process would make it harder for external actors to turn ethnic differences into instruments of intervention. The study stated that strengthening state capacities, reducing sovereignty gaps and increasing regional resilience are priority objectives in Turkey's regional strategy.
