Analysis: What's behind Lebanon-Turkey's fast-improving relationship?
by Dalal Saoud · UPIBEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Relations between Lebanon and Turkey recently underwent a significant shift, driven by the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Iran's reduced influence, growing challenges posed by Israel and other major regional developments, Lebanese and Turkish analysts said.
Closer ties would benefit both countries, with Ankara becoming an important political, economic and security partner, as well as a balancing actor that would allow Lebanon to diversify its regional partnerships and reduce Iran's long-standing influence in the country.
That, however, would not mean replacing Iranian influence with Turkish influence.
Turkey sees Lebanon as increasingly strategically important to expanding its regional influence and securing a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean. But the core priority is to help stabilize both Syria and Lebanon -- a goal that will require close cooperation with Beirut.
After the ouster of Assad's regime in December 2024, Turkey has emerged as the most influential external power in Syria. Its close relationship with the new leadership in Damascus, built on longstanding ties with the Syrian opposition and reinforced by its military presence in northern Syria, has positioned Ankara to play an expanded political, military and economic role in the country.
Lebanon has "growing strategic importance" for Turkey, according to Imad Salamey, a senior Middle East policy adviser and associate professor of political science and international affairs at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
"Ankara's priority of consolidating a stable Syrian neighborhood cannot be achieved without a stable and cooperative Lebanon," Salamey told UPI.
He said there is also "an important convergence" among Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United States around strengthening state institutions and limiting destabilizing external influence in Syria and Lebanon, thereby creating favorable conditions for Turkish-Lebanese rapprochement.
Lebanon could benefit economically and diplomatically, but particularly through security cooperation with Turkey and Syria on border control, smuggling, trade and potentially energy transit through Syrian territory, he said.
With Assad gone, new leaderships in Lebanon and Syria have set aside decades of strained relations and begun to strengthen political, diplomatic and security coordination, with a particular focus on curbing arms and drug smuggling, preventing illegal crossings, and combating terrorism and organized crime.
The measures targeted Iran's transfer of funds and weapons to Lebanon's Hezbollah group, its main proxy and once its most powerful regional non-state armed actor.
Ezgi Başaran, a Turkish political scientist and an associate member at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford University, said bilateral relations between Lebanon and Turkey are "improving fast," noting that the overland corridor that carried Iranian weapons and money from Tehran through Iraq and Syria to the Lebanese border has been severed.
"Into that emptied space, Ankara has moved as the principal patron of Syria. From this perspective, Lebanon sits next door to the country where Turkey now holds more leverage than any other outside power," Başaran told UPI.
She said Turkey is the one power capable of brokering Beirut's dealings with Damascus on the issues that matter most between them -- the border, return of Syrian refugees, trade and management of their long and porous frontier.
"It brings reconstruction capacity and commercial weight at a moment when Lebanon's economy is in a dire situation and much of its south is rubble," Başaran said.
She added that Turkey, as a NATO member with "an unusually warm relationship" with U.S. President Donald Trump, also can "offer a form of diplomatic cover, giving Beirut a way to avoid depending solely on France and the Gulf states, its traditional external sponsors."
In return, Başaran said Turkey could gain a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, commercial access and "something less tangible that Erdoğan likes -- the standing of an indispensable broker in the Sunni Arab world."
Moreover, Lebanon gives Ankara "another point of leverage against Israel's widening regional footprint," she said.
Last July's separate visits to Turkey by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam for meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and senior Turkish officials underscored the shift in relations, signaling a new phase of political, economic and security cooperation in support of regional stability.
In recent years, particularly during times of crisis, Turkey has strengthened its soft-power presence in Lebanon through humanitarian and development assistance, supporting projects in health, education, infrastructure and culture.
With Iran's regional influence waning, could Lebanon be caught between Israel and Turkey this time?
Salamey argued that Turkey's most constructive role would be to reinforce Lebanese sovereignty and state authority, while supporting regional arrangements that reduce both Iranian intervention and Israeli military pressure.
"The more sustainable formula would be a Turkish role that strengthens Lebanese institutions rather than establishes another sphere of influence -- or becomes a substitute patron for Iran," he said.
To Başaran, Turkey can be "one pole among several in a more plural arrangement," acting as a broker and economic partner alongside the Gulf countries, France and the U.S.
"That is a broader and shallower form of influence than Iran's, and a far less coercive one," she said. "The real question is whether the new competition is more balanced than the old and therefore potentially more stabilizing, or simply more crowded and more dangerous. It is hard to know at the moment."
How might Israel respond to Ankara's growing regional role, particularly given Erdoğan's statements that Turkey's security interests extend to Damascus and Beirut, and the deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations?
According to Salamey, much will depend on whether Turkey's engagement is perceived as military-strategic encirclement or as support for stronger sovereign states capable of controlling their territories and borders.
Başaran argued that the sharpest point of friction is in Syria, where Israeli and Turkish interests "are already grinding against each other," while Lebanon has not yet emerged as a major point of conflict.
"I would not expect Israel to respond to Turkey the way it responds to Iran," she said. "Turkey is a NATO member, and open military confrontation is off the table for both sides."
A stronger Turkish role, alongside the new Mecca joint defense agreement between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- described by some as an "Islamic NATO" -- raises the question of whether these developments could strengthen the position of Lebanon's Sunni community.
That would certainly benefit Lebanese Sunnis, Salamey noted, but the challenge is to demonstrate that Turkish-Lebanese convergence serves Lebanon's common interests rather than one community at the expense of another.
He said this would help ease Christians' possible fears of "renewed political Islam ... or neo-Ottoman ambitions" and Shiites' concerns about attempts to reduce their political and security influence.
"The central challenge remains convincing Christians, Shia, Sunnis and other groups that closer relations with Turkey represent an opportunity for collective sovereignty and stability rather than a new sectarian or geopolitical alignment," he added.