President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has in recent years referred to Israel as a “terror state,” compared its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Hitler and suggested the possibility of Turkish military intervention inside Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, has called Mr. Erdogan an “antisemitic dictator,” and members of the Israeli government have accused Turkey of supporting terrorism and acting like “an enemy state.”

This war of words is the most visible feature of a growing rivalry between Turkey and Israel that analysts and officials fear could exacerbate volatility in the Middle East, a region already reeling from wars and their aftermath in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iran.

Both Turkey and Israel are allies of the United States and have warm relations with the Trump administration. But the countries, boasting strong militaries that are increasingly active outside their borders, are pursuing strategic visions that put them at odds in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.

The heightened military assertiveness by Turkey and Israel has fueled “an inevitable geostrategic competition and rivalry,” said Ziya Meral, the director of Raven Research and Advisory, a global risk consultancy in London.

That does not mean the two countries will end up in open conflict, he said, but he warned that tension increased the risk of miscalculation and that limited military action by one side to “send a message” to the other “could really, really backfire.”

Israel made just such a move last week, when it bombed a defunct air base in northern Syria to pre-empt what Israeli officials said was the imminent deployment there of Turkish forces. Syria sits between Israel and Turkey, and both consider it crucial to their respective security.

The Turkish and Syrian governments denied plans for any such troop movement to the air base. No one was killed in the attack.

Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria and Iraq, criticized the strike in a post on social media as an “unnecessary escalation” and called on Turkey and Israel to “prioritize logical discourse over further military incidents.”

Relations between Turkey and Israel have not always been so bad. They have long had diplomatic and trade relations despite occasional disputes, usually related to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.

Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel after its founding in 1948, and Turkish forces did not participate in the subsequent wars with Israel. Turkey is a U.S. ally in NATO, and Israel receives extensive military support from the United States.

Two recent events, however, have driven the relationship’s acrimonious turn.

The first was Israel’s war in Gaza, launched in response to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people in Israel. Turkish officials criticized how Israel fought in Gaza and routinely accused Israeli forces of committing genocide. Mr. Erdogan called Mr. Netanyahu a “bloodsucking vampire” and voiced support for Hamas, which Israel, the United States and other governments consider a terrorist organization.

The second event was the ouster of the dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria in late 2024 and the creation of a new government headed by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadist with strong ties to Turkey.

Turkey has provided Mr. al-Sharaa with diplomatic and military support aimed at stabilizing his fragile state. In the wake of Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, meanwhile, Israeli strikes destroyed much of Syria’s military equipment, citing distrust of Mr. al-Sharaa. Israel has also occupied territory in southern Syria, saying this aims to prevent cross-border threats from Islamic militants.

The Hamas-led attack in 2023 shaped Israel’s approach to the region and to Turkey, said Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“We do not allow threats to grow; we tackle them in the beginning,” she said. “That’s the leading security doctrine, and that makes Israel more willing to take risks and less open to political settlements.”

Israel views Turkey as a growing military power with a weapons industry that competes in some markets against Israel’s, with troop deployments in other countries — including, in part, Syria and Iraq — and with leaders who speak of Israel in a hostile fashion, she said.

“When you have an actor that has capabilities and is talking in a certain way and is also showing its willingness to employ its forces beyond its borders, that’s something hard to ignore,” she said.

Recent events have also shaped Turkey’s approach to Israel.

Turkish leaders see a humanitarian catastrophe in the war in Gaza, which the enclave’s health authorities say has killed 73,000 people, including tens of thousands of women and children and an undisclosed number of militants. Turkish officials have called Israel’s military advances in Lebanon and Syria destabilizing.

Turkey also strongly opposed the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, saying it would provoke a dangerous regional crisis, and sought to prevent it.

Disagreements in the Middle East color interactions between the two countries elsewhere, said Salim Cevik, a visiting fellow at the Center for Applied Turkish Studies in Berlin.

“Because Turkey and Israel consider themselves rivals in the region, they consider each other’s movements in other places also from a win-and-lose perspective,” he said.

In the Horn of Africa, Turkey has a close relationship with Somalia, which hosts a substantial Turkish diplomatic and military presence.

In December, Israel became the first nation to recognize Somaliland, a breakaway region that declared independence from Somalia in 1991. At the time, Israel said the move was in line with the Abraham Accords, Israel’s recent normalization of relations with a few other Muslim-majority states. Mr. Erdogan called Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “illegal and unacceptable.”

In the Eastern Mediterranean, Israel has stepped-up military and energy cooperation with Greece and Cyprus, both of which have longstanding territorial disputes with Turkey. Mr. Erdogan sought to play down the importance of new agreements between the three countries in December, comparing them to “a rattling tin can.”

This month, Turkey signed a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which analysts said was partly intended to create a counterweight to Israeli influence in the region.

The rivalry’s most perilous flashpoint, however, remains Syria.

Turkey seeks a stable, centralized Syria, Mr. Cevik said, while Israel prefers a divided state with a weak military that cannot pose a threat.

“These two visions conflict very fundamentally,” he said.

The Israeli strike last week on the Syrian air base, in the town of Abu al-Duhur about 40 miles south of the Turkish border, was a rare military act in a competition that has largely played out in harsh statements and rival diplomatic initiatives.

On Aug. 19, the day after the strike, Mr. Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media that Israel would not accept a Turkish military presence in Syria “that descends south because it threatens us.”

Two days later, Turkey announced that it would seek the arrest of Mr. Netanyahu through Interpol on charges including genocide and torture as part of a domestic case in Turkey over Israel’s treatment of pro-Palestine activists intercepted at sea on their way to Gaza.

In the days since, U.S. officials have worked to restore dialogue between the two governments. Some Israeli analysts have speculated that the attack in Syria was part of an effort by Mr. Netanyahu to shore up his national security credentials ahead of Israeli elections in October.

Israel and Turkey are each unpopular among people in the other country, allowing officials to earn political points at home by criticizing the rival country.

Still, Mr. Cevik said, the heated language represents real disagreements.

He, too, said he did not expect Turkey and Israel to engage in direct military clashes.

“I don’t see it as likely because, primarily, the Americans have an interest in keeping these two countries away from active conflict,” he said.

David M. Halbfinger contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Safak Timur from Istanbul.