UNIFIL is finishing. The 7,500-strong UN force in southern Lebanon loses its mandate at the end of this year, after the Security Council voted unanimously to wind it up, and nobody has settled what takes its place.
The latest. Erdoğan hosted Lebanese President Joseph Aoun at the presidential complex in Ankara on Thursday 30 July 2026 and said Türkiye wants to be in whatever replaces it. On Friday, Israeli forces detonated tunnels beneath Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in blasts that Lebanon's National Center for Geophysics measured as seismic waves equivalent to a 3.8-magnitude earthquake. Aoun called it a direct threat to the framework agreement that is supposed to end the war.
The ask
"The completion of the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, deployed in southern Lebanon, will constitute an important development," Erdoğan said at the joint press conference. "After the withdrawal of the current international force, Türkiye wants to take part in all initiatives that will be launched to support security in the region and to secure Lebanon's sovereignty."
France and Italy have said they are interested too, according to the Associated Press. What the successor force looks like, and whether it sits under a UN mandate at all, is unresolved.
Aoun described it as a continuation. Türkiye's role inside UNIFIL, he said, has been very important, and Lebanon appreciates it.
The Security Council terminated the mission last year under pressure from the United States and Israel, AP reports. By Aoun's account, then, the force being wound down is one Ankara already has a place in, and the arrangement replacing it does not exist yet.
What Türkiye is offering
"Our support for the Lebanese Armed Forces will also continue in the security context," Erdoğan said.
That sentence carries more weight than it looks. The framework agreement signed on 26 June 2026, mediated by the United States, provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territory in exchange for the disarmament of non-state groups, Hezbollah among them, and it works by having the Lebanese army move into the ground Israel leaves. The army is the mechanism. It is also short of money.
Aoun spent Saturday, the army's 81st anniversary, making the same argument at home. The army is "the sole guarantor of Lebanon's unity, sovereignty, and independence," he said, and "there is no legitimacy for any weapons outside the legitimacy of the state." Its responsibility grows with every step of Israeli withdrawal, and the next phase needs full deployment along the whole southern border. He asked for more international support in equipment and training.
Erdoğan had offered exactly that two days earlier.
The Lebanese cabinet decided in August 2025 to put every weapon in the country, Hezbollah's included, under state authority. By January the army said the first phase south of the Litani had met its objectives, while warning that Israeli attacks and the continuing occupation were holding up the rest. On 21 July it began deploying in Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, one of the pilot areas, after Israeli forces pulled back.
Erdoğan also pledged humanitarian and technical aid, support for Lebanon's institutional capacity, and help rebuilding the south.
Aoun said one thing in Ankara that was not a thank-you
He thanked Türkiye at length. He said the two countries have deep-rooted ties, that Türkiye has stood by Lebanon since the Beirut port explosion, and he reached for Atatürk's "peace at home, peace in the world," which he said has gained rather than lost importance in a century.
Then he said this: whether brother or friend, whoever it may be, Lebanon will not allow anyone to interfere in its sovereignty.
He was in Ankara asking for security help when he said it, which makes the line worth reading twice.
Erdoğan, for his part, said he believes the developing dialogue between Lebanon and Syria should keep growing, and that Türkiye is ready to help two countries with a difficult past strengthen their relations. Trump has repeatedly proposed that Syrian forces enter Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, a prospect that has alarmed Beirut, and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has said several times that he has no wish to intervene militarily. Türkiye is the outside power with the most influence in Damascus. Nothing in either leader's remarks connected those things.
Then Israel blew up the castle
Israeli forces carried out large-scale demolitions across southern Lebanon on Friday, destroying caves and homes, and detonating tunnels beneath Beaufort Castle. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the tunnels were Hezbollah's and formed part of a plan to attack settlements in the Galilee.
Lebanese authorities said homes in nearby villages were damaged. In a statement carried by the National News Agency, Aoun called the blasts a highly dangerous escalation and a blatant violation of existing commitments, and said they were a direct threat to the process launched under the framework agreement.
He also noted the timing. The explosions came on the eve of a meeting in Rome to continue talks on implementing that agreement.
Israeli attacks since 2 March have killed 4,333 people in Lebanon and injured 12,236, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. Israeli forces still occupy territory in the south, some of it for decades, and advanced more than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) into Lebanese land during their latest operations.
Erdoğan called it the first visit at head-of-state level from Lebanon in 17 years. Aoun said he was the first Lebanese president to come in 70.