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Israel strikes the airbases Türkiye had surveyed

25 March – 3 April 2025Key eventT4 (Tiyas) / Palmyra / Hama

MilitaryDiplomaticTürkiye and northern Syria

Israeli aircraft strike the T4 (Tiyas) and Palmyra airbases in Homs province and the military airport at Hama on 3 April 2025 — nine days after strikes on T4 and Palmyra that hit hours before a scheduled Turkish inspection visit, which was then cancelled. Regional intelligence officials and Syrian military sources told reporters that Turkish teams had visited the three sites in the preceding weeks to assess runways, hangars and other infrastructure while Ankara and Damascus discussed a defence agreement; one Syrian source described T4 as unusable afterwards. Türkiye's defence ministry dismissed the reporting as lacking credibility. A senior Israeli official said Israel sought to prevent military, naval and air bases in Syria "under Turkish protection". The strikes are documented; the causal link to the Turkish visits rests on unnamed officials and is recorded as reported, not established.

Why it mattersThe first occasion on which Israeli force was applied to Türkiye's position in Syria rather than to Iranian-linked networks or residual Assad-era capability. It set the pattern the module has watched since: what the two external powers contest is not territory but a small set of Syrian airfields, whose reactivation is simultaneously Ankara's route to a rebuilt Syrian air arm and, in Israel's reading, the threshold at which it stops having uncontested access to Syrian airspace.
Confidence: ModerateSources: Reuters↗ · Established international media reporting · Official government statements · Middle East Institute — Syria programme↗MethodologyCorrections

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