Ankara gave Hezbollah delegations assurances that Turkey supported the Iran-backed group’s continued role in Lebanon, and that Damascus had no plans to take action against the terrorist organization, Lebanese Member of Parliament Ali Fayyad told the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen last week.
The Hezbollah politician’s comments came a week before US President Donald Trump told Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that Syria should take over the role of removing the Hezbollah threat, "If Israel can't do the job without killing everyone else.”
"I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because to be honest with you, I think they'd do a better job of doing it,” Trump told the emir.
Ankara has received a number of delegations from the terrorist organization, despite maintaining close relationships with Western allies like the United States as a member of NATO. The Alma Education and Research Center reported last year that these relationships have not prevented the country from serving as a base for transferring money for Hezbollah. The Research Institute for European and American Studies also noted in a publication last month that Turkey has allowed Hezbollah to actively recruit from its soil and has actively received Hezbollah-linked delegations under political or quasi-diplomatic cover.
Last year, Sayyid Ammar al-Moussawi, head of Hezbollah’s Arab and international relations department, reportedly participated as the head of a delegation of the organization in a conference held in Istanbul on the subject of “Palestine.”
Insisting that such unverified claims by a member of Hezbollah should be “treated cautiously,” Burak Can Çelik, a geopolitical analyst and writer based in Istanbul, told The Jerusalem Post that Ankara has traditionally tried to maintain open channels with a range of regional actors, “even those with whom it does not share identical interests. Such contacts are often aimed at preventing escalation and preserving regional stability rather than endorsing the positions of those actors.”
Turkey continues to 'balance' both sides
He explained, “Ankara continues to pursue a balancing strategy. On one hand, it remains a NATO member with strong economic and security ties to the West; on the other hand, it seeks to preserve diplomatic leverage across the Middle East by engaging with different actors. Therefore, I would be careful about interpreting Fayyad’s claims as evidence of a strategic shift away from Western allies. If anything, they may reflect Turkey’s longstanding preference for maintaining dialogue with competing regional forces while avoiding direct alignment with any single axis.”
Çelik noted that Hezbollah may also have “strategic incentives to portray Turkey as an actor that is closer to the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ than it actually is.”
“At a time when the group is facing considerable regional pressure and seeking to convey the message that it is not isolated, such narratives may serve both to reassure its support base and to reinforce its political legitimacy,” he noted. “Therefore, these statements may reflect not only Turkey’s actual foreign policy posture, but also Hezbollah’s own strategic communication needs and political objectives.”