This book explains how Turkey and Israel moved from the strategic partnership of the 1990s to structural antagonism and the growing possibility of direct conflict in the 2020s. Focusing on relations in the twenty-first century and particularly after 2023, it employs Neoclassical Realism and strategic culture to explain this transformation.

The analysis connects changes in the international and regional environment with the competing strategic visions through which Turkey and Israel interpret threats and opportunities. It argues that their respective foreign policy behaviours have produced “clashing revisionisms” and a dyadic security dilemma, as each state’s pursuit of security and geopolitical ambition progressively constrains the other. Examining this dynamic across the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Horn of Africa, the book shows how Turkish-Israeli antagonism has expanded across interconnected regional theatres. It concludes by considering the domestic and international factors that could contain or transform the rivalry and its implications for the emerging regional order.

Zenonas Tziarras is a Lecturer in the Department of Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cyprus. He holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick (UK) and is the author of Turkish Foreign Policy: The Lausanne Syndrome in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (Springer, 2022).