When the foreign and defense ministers and military chiefs of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan met in Istanbul on August 31, they gave their trilateral pact a formal name: the Mecca Defence Alliance. They also began turning the agreement signed three weeks earlier into an institution, with a permanent secretariat in Riyadh and a Pakistani secretary-general serving its first three-year term.

The timing is important. The agreement emerged during the American and Israeli war against Iran, after Saudi territory, energy infrastructure and maritime interests had come under attack from Iran and Iran-backed groups. Saudi authorities confirmed in July that drones launched by Iran-backed militias in Iraq had targeted oil facilities in Riyadh and the Eastern Province. For Riyadh, strengthening deterrence had become an immediate security requirement.

Yet the alliance was not improvised in response to the war. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that he had been discussing the project with Turkey’s partners for two years and eight months. The conflict accelerated the process, but the rationale behind it is older and broader.

The Mecca Defence Alliance is therefore best understood as the meeting of three complementary interests. Saudi Arabia wants greater protection and more diverse security partnerships. Pakistan wants to consolidate its role as a military and diplomatic actor beyond South Asia. Turkey sees an opportunity to turn its military capabilities and defense industry into greater regional influence.

Security through flexible alignments

The agreement states that an armed attack against one member will be regarded as an attack against all three. This has produced comparisons with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but the resemblance is mainly rhetorical.

NATO has an integrated military command, common planning procedures and decades of institutional development. The Mecca Defence Alliance does not yet have comparable structures. Its first joint statement focuses instead on consultation, military cooperation, joint exercises, defense technology and coordination among the three governments.

Their threat perceptions differ. Saudi Arabia is concerned with attacks on its territory and maritime routes. Turkey’s priorities stretch from Syria and the Black Sea to the Horn of Africa, while Pakistan remains focused on India and Afghanistan. Riyadh sees Iranian missiles and allied groups as direct threats, but Turkey values continued engagement with Tehran and Pakistan has a strong interest in protecting its sensitive border with Iran.

The alliance is therefore an example of alignment rather than a rigid bloc. The three countries can cooperate where their interests meet without adopting identical positions on every regional conflict.

This reflects a wider turn toward smaller forms of cooperation as large multilateral organizations struggle to respond to crises. These arrangements are easier to build because they require less political agreement, although they may also be less predictable when interests diverge. The same logic applies to procurement: Greece’s $3.5 billion purchase of an Israeli air defense network creates alignment through technology, training and maintenance without forming a new alliance.

What Turkey brings and what it wants

Fidan’s account of the lengthy negotiations suggests that Ankara’s priorities and capabilities helped shape the pact well before the outbreak of war. Turkey contributes an experienced military and a defense industry producing drones, precision weapons, electronic warfare systems, armored vehicles and naval platforms, alongside training and maintenance. Turkish defense exports reached $10.05 billion in 2025, up 48 percent year over year, and exceeded $11 billion on a rolling twelve-month basis by June 2026.

Saudi financing and demand could support larger orders and joint research, while Pakistan contributes engineering expertise and experience in co-production. Together, these partnerships could help Turkish companies increase production, reach new markets and build longer-term relationships through maintenance and technology support.

The industrial partnership will not be free of tension. Vision 2030 makes Riyadh a customer for Turkish industry over the next three years and a potential competitor over the next decade.

Saudi Arabia does not want to remain dependent on imported weapons. Its official industrial strategy aims to localize more than half of military expenditure by 2030. Joint projects will therefore involve difficult negotiations over intellectual property, export rights and where systems are manufactured.

The same cooperation that benefits Turkish companies today could help Saudi firms compete with them tomorrow. This places a natural limit on the industrial partnership.

Pakistan provides an early model

According to reporting based on Pakistani security and government sources, Islamabad deployed around 8,000 troops, approximately 16 aircraft, mostly JF-17 fighters, along with drone squadrons and an HQ-9 air defense system to the kingdom. Saudi Arabia financed the deployment, while Pakistani personnel operated the equipment. The force strengthened Saudi territorial defense without Pakistan joining offensive operations against Iran or the Houthis.

Turkey’s likely contribution is different. Ankara can provide maritime surveillance, intelligence, naval coordination, air defense technology and joint exercises.

This division of labor may make the alliance more workable by allowing each member to contribute differently. The difficulty is that the public agreement does not define how much support would be sufficient during a serious crisis.

India presents the clearest example. Turkey has close political and defense relations with Pakistan, but it has no interest in entering a South Asian war. Saudi Arabia also has an increasingly important relationship with New Delhi. A renewed India-Pakistan conflict would test how far the collective defense language actually extends, even if direct Saudi or Turkish intervention remains unlikely.

Iran, Israel and regional deterrence

Since 2023, Israel has increasingly relied on military force across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and, most controversially, Doha. This activism is now contributing to regional instability rather than producing a more durable security order. Israel appears to be miscalculating the political consequences of its military superiority, while the government’s domestic incentives encourage continued confrontation and make de-escalation more difficult. The strike in Doha was especially consequential because it raised doubts among Gulf governments about whether their ties with Washington could protect them from another American partner. These developments form part of the wider regional setting surrounding the pact.

Turkey is not without responsibility for the deterioration in regional relations. Its support for Hamas, confrontational rhetoric and increasingly assertive posture have intensified tensions with Israel. Their rivalry is now particularly visible in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean, where Ankara and Jerusalem promote competing visions for Syria’s future. Israel’s military policies have also made Saudi normalization politically far more difficult while the wars in Gaza and Syria continue.

This does not turn the Mecca Defence Alliance into an anti-Israel coalition. Its members maintain different relationships with Israel and are not preparing for direct confrontation. But Israel’s actions have strengthened their incentive to coordinate and limit the ability of any single regional power to act without restraint.

The message to both Israel and Iran is that regional states want greater control over their own security environment. The alliance seeks to reinforce deterrence without widening existing wars, but its emergence also reflects a growing judgment that Israel’s present course is itself becoming a source of regional instability.

Burden sharing with Washington

The three members are responding to doubts about American reliability, but they are not trying to remove Washington from the regional security order. Saudi Arabia still depends on American military support, Turkey is a central NATO power, and Pakistan retains an important relationship with the United States.

There has been no formal American endorsement of the pact. However, reporting and analysis from Washington suggest that it is compatible with the American preference for greater burden sharing among regional partners. A security arrangement among three countries with close ties to Washington is unlikely to be viewed in the same way as a coalition designed to exclude the United States.

The alliance is therefore better understood as diversification than replacement. Its members want greater room to act while preserving the advantages of their American relationships.

What Europe should notice

Europe has so far responded cautiously. The alliance has produced no coordinated public reaction from the European Union (EU) or major European governments, reflecting an unresolved tension in Europe’s relationship with Turkey. Ankara is increasingly important to European security, particularly in the Black Sea, the defense industry and NATO’s southern flank, but remains largely outside emerging EU defense initiatives. Recent European analysis describes Turkey as an increasingly necessary security partner while noting that the EU still lacks a coherent framework for engaging it.

The Mecca Defence Alliance does not signal a Turkish move away from Europe. It shows that Ankara will not wait for Europe to define its place, and will continue building security relationships in other regions while European governments debate how closely it should be integrated into their own defense architecture.

The Red Sea as the first test

Turkey has already joined Saudi-led efforts to create a multinational maritime coalition for the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden. The initiative began before the Mecca Defence Alliance was signed and remains a separate framework, but it offers a ready-made setting for practical cooperation.

Their interests converge there. Saudi Arabia needs to protect its western coastline and economic projects. Turkey’s position in Somalia gives it a stake in nearby sea routes, while Pakistan’s navy brings experience extending into the Gulf of Aden.

Joint exercises, surveillance, intelligence sharing and shipping protection are more likely than a collective campaign against the Houthis. These activities can produce visible results without requiring the three countries to share the same position on Yemen or Iran.

Egypt is essential to any lasting Red Sea system because disruption near Bab el-Mandeb directly affects traffic through the Suez Canal. Cairo may participate through the wider maritime coalition, but membership of the Mecca Defence Alliance would carry wider liabilities and could appear to reduce its traditional role in Arab and Red Sea security.

Maritime cooperation will expose the alliance’s unresolved questions. Would a drone strike on a Saudi-linked tanker trigger collective defense? Would naval escorts or intelligence support satisfy the obligation? Does the agreement require parliamentary ratification, and when do its commitments formally enter into force?

The Red Sea offers the alliance an achievable first test. It allows its members to demonstrate cooperation in an area where their interests clearly overlap, while avoiding the more difficult question of whether they would fight in one another’s wars.

Turkey’s strategy for an age of alignments

My expectation is that the alliance will develop unevenly. Maritime coordination, air defense, training and joint production are likely to advance because they offer practical benefits without forcing the members to enter one another’s conflicts. The collective defense clause will remain ambiguous because a clearer definition would expose their differences over Iran, Israel, Yemen and India.

The alliance is representative of the emerging regional order: more substantial than a political declaration, but less rigid than a traditional military bloc.

The Baghdad Pact belonged to a different era. It placed Turkey and Pakistan inside a security architecture designed largely by Western powers to contain the Soviet Union. The Mecca Defence Alliance is being shaped by regional governments seeking greater responsibility for their own security.

Rather than replacing the existing security order, the three countries are adding another layer to it. For Turkey, the value lies in connecting its military capacity, industrial strength and regional reach within a framework it can help shape.

That Turkey’s democracy has already been under severe pressure for years is hardly news anymore. However, the May 2026 events, with the court dismissing the main opposition party’s leadership, not only cast another shadow over the country’s future but also over its relations with Europe in a period of apparent rapprochement. Therefore, the question is no longer limited to whether Turkey is on the way to full autocracy but also to how Europe can maintain cooperation without becoming complicit in this trajectory.

What is happening in Turkey did not unfold in isolation, but along an ongoing pattern of domestic and international shifts. In late May, an appeals court annulled the 2023 leadership congress of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s main opposition force and the party of its founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Its current leader, Özgür Özel, has been removed under alleged corruption charges to reinstate his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a divisive figure among voters who had led the party for over a decade without being able to defeat Erdogan’s AKP, and now accused of double-dealing with the deep state. The police stormed the party’s headquarters and used force against its leadership and supporters gathered in the streets, denouncing what they called a “judicial coup”. Almost simultaneously, Istanbul Bilgi University—long associated with liberal academic spaces—was closed by presidential decree, only to be reopened days later without explanation.

Taken together, these developments suggest not merely another episode of democratic erosion, but a qualitative shift in how political competition is engineered to grant regime survival after twenty-four years. The government aims to prevent surprises in the 2028 elections against a growing popular opposition. Since the constitution bars President Erdogan from another term, options such as appealing to Kurdish voters through a “new peace process” to change it or calling early elections exist, but declining approval and an economic crisis threaten the success of these strategies.

Yet focusing only on domestic dynamics misses an important part of the picture. There is no doubt that Turkey’s (geo)political relevance has lately surged. As Europe faces conflicts at its borders and uncertainty over the US security umbrella, Akara’s role in NATO, its military capabilities, its position in multiple regional crises, and its centrality in migration and energy routes make it a strategic partner. Although its inclusion in the European emerging security architecture remains a matter of political debate, favorable views across capitals and bilateral industrial-military partnerships with European countries are already a reality. So, the legitimate question would be why, given the current favorable situation and apparent room for rapprochement, the Turkish government has drifted further away from democratic standards?

A favorable environment for a palace-approved opposition

Part of the answer may lie exactly here. As some put it, we live in an “age of impunity” where external checks on authoritarian leaders have eroded or vanished. This environment, where the tolerance threshold has shifted, explains why Erdogan feels free to act beyond Turkey’s usual democratic boundaries. Compared with the past, Europe’s diminished normative appeal no longer provides the same anchoring effect on democratization, while a multipolar international order and Trump’s approach to politics incentivize transactional, interest-based relations. In such a context, the “geopolitical credit” lately extended to Ankara from the West has often translated into muted criticism of its domestic trajectory.

When it comes to EU–Turkey relations, the contrast with earlier phases is striking. In the early 2000s, under the initial AKP reform drive and the momentum of the EU accession process, Turkey was often presented as a “model” for the region. Today, that horizon has largely faded. Accession talks are effectively frozen, and engagement is driven less by normative convergence than by strategic necessity. The arrest of former Istanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, last year is emblematic: it triggered one of the largest protest waves in recent years, with sustained mobilization in Istanbul and other major cities, already putting into question the future of Turkish democracy. However, despite a few critical positions, the days are long gone when, during the 2013 Gezi protests or after the 2016 failed coup, the EU institutions and public opinion raised their voices against increased authoritarianism in Turkey.

Undoubtedly, coupled with an engrossed state machinery skewed in favor of the incumbent, this permissive environment complements the government’s calculation: to neutralize a party and its new leadership, which became the leading force in the 2024 local elections, capable of capturing transversal votes and gaining international popularity. As Özel himself warned months earlier, the goal is no longer simply to weaken but to “refashion the CHP into a palace‑approved ‘opposition’” and preserve only the appearance of pluralism. The annulment of an internal party election, combined with the judicial pressure on opposition figures and municipalities, points in this direction. Legal instruments are used not just against individuals but to constrain the opposition’s governing capacity, particularly at the local level, where it has been strongest.

This matters because in Turkey, local politics has offered a viable pathway for democratic resilience. The CHP’s victories in 2019 and especially in the 2024 municipal elections demonstrated that electoral competition, even under uneven conditions, could still produce meaningful outcomes. Cities such as Istanbul and Ankara became not only administrative hubs but political laboratories, where the opposition built credibility by delivering tangible policies. It is precisely this success that seems to have triggered the current judicial offensive aimed at undermining the opposition’s main source of legitimacy and its ability to present itself as a governing alternative. In response, the CHP has attempted to shift away from institutional politics, organizing large-scale rallies across the country and repositioning itself as a broader movement of democratic resistance. Yet, the re-emergence of figures associated with the party’s old establishment, embodied by Kılıçdaroğlu and parts of his network, and the apparent willingness of some to align tactically with the judicial process risk reinforcing fragmentation at a critical juncture.

Nonetheless, precisely for this reason, the current crisis may serve as a catalyst, exposing other opposition actors to similar risks if they remain passive, while forcing the new CHP cadres to distance themselves from the old one by seeking legitimacy directly through mobilization. The irony is that, by intervening so heavily, the AKP is effectively transforming a party it long portrayed as the embodiment of the “state” into one that increasingly derives its legitimacy from society, repositioning it as a genuine “party of the nation.”

Europe, time to come to terms with reality

This is where the real dilemma for Europe lies. Europe is not choosing between cooperation and disengagement; it is choosing how to cooperate. The ambition of building structured, rules-based multilateral frameworks is increasingly being replaced by ad hoc coordination, bilateral deals, and company-to-company agreements, particularly in the defense sector. This reflects not only the tension between security interests and democratic values, but also between two competing understandings of strategic autonomy. On the one hand, Turkey seeks greater room for maneuver, hedging between power centers and leveraging its geopolitical position. On the other hand, Europe’s version of strategic autonomy still hinges—at least in principle—on institutional trust, shared rules, and political convergence.

The more Turkey’s domestic trajectory diverges, the harder it becomes to reconcile these two visions. Ignoring democratic backsliding may offer short-term strategic gains, but risks normalizing a model in which authoritarian consolidation proceeds under the cover of geopolitical necessity. Ultimately, as Özgür Özel argues, the country has become “one of the defining democratic struggles of the twenty-first century,” whose outcome will resonate far beyond its borders. As the Hungarian case has shown, even entrenched systems can be challenged through sustained political mobilization, coalition‑building, and credible electoral alternatives.

For Europe to sustain these hopes, a more complex approach is needed than the current mix of pragmatism and silence. Maintaining cooperation with Turkey is unavoidable; turning that cooperation into a shield for authoritarian practices is not. However, even if one accepts current geopolitical shifts and needs as somewhat structural, a strategic engagement to be sustainable and mutually beneficial still requires recognizing the strategic value of Turkish democracy. Despite historical democratic deficiencies at the institutional and highest political level, Turkey remains a country with a long tradition of democratic resilience at the societal level. This is why “Turkey is not Russia”. Domestically, it has maintained an authoritarian yet somewhat competitive milieu. Internationally, it has prevented Turkish foreign policy from drifting away from its NATO and derivative commitments. It is in this tiny but resilient space that Europe can still play a role by engaging with civil society, providing funds at the local level, and forging people-to-people connections. Concrete measures, such as the Customs Union and visa liberalization reforms, would counter the widespread disillusionment among Turkish citizens vis-à-vis Europe’s missed promises and pave the way for a new normative path that goes beyond politics.

The need for a democratic Turkey

A decade ago, the assertiveness of Turkey’s behavior raised the question of “Who lost Turkey,” referring to the (geo)political distance between Ankara and the West. Today, the West might not have totally lost — or even regain — Turkey as an ad hoc strategic partner, but failing to defend its democracy could have irreversible consequences. Once a regime can free itself from internal and external checks and balances and its leadership remains solely focused on political survival, it becomes difficult to predict whether Turkey’s and Europe’s common interests and modus vivendi could be irremediably lost. The challenge, therefore, is not simply to react to Turkey’s democratic crisis, but to ensure that strategic necessity does not quietly redefine the terms of engagement—and that supporting democratic resilience in Turkey is not treated as a secondary concern, but as part of Europe’s own long-term strategic interest.

At the same time, it would be paternalistic to think that the outcome depends solely on external actors. The CHP and the broader opposition still retain a window of opportunity if they can overcome internal fragmentation or forge a broader social coalition around a reformist axis, building on the momentum generated by municipal governance and a new generation of leaders. The days ahead will be extremely difficult for the opposition, but if a democratic light is kept on in Turkey, things may not unfold as smoothly as the ruling regime hopes.

In recent years, Turkish foreign policy has become one of the most debated and, at the same time, one of the most difficult cases to interpret in contemporary international politics. Turkey is a NATO member, but it does not always behave like a conventional Western ally. It remains formally tied to the European Union through candidacy, the Customs Union, and dense institutional links, yet its accession process is effectively frozen. It supports Ukraine militarily, but it has not joined Western sanctions against Russia. It positions itself as a mediator in multiple crises, while also using hard power in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the South Caucasus. It speaks the language of sovereignty, autonomy, and multipolarity, but remains deeply embedded in Western security and economic structures.

This combination of activism, ambiguity, and strategic flexibility has generated a large and rich literature on Turkish foreign policy. Scholars have examined Turkey’s strategic autonomy, its oscillations between the West and non-Western partners, its growing use of military tools, its role as a middle power, and the domestic political drivers behind its external behavior. Yet one important dimension has remained underdeveloped: the systematic study of how Turkey officially talks about its foreign policy over time.

In a recently published article in Turkish Studies, we introduce the Turkish Foreign Policy Dataset, or TFPD. The article presents a new text-as-data resource built from more than 5,000 official documents issued between January 2000 and December 2023 by three key foreign policy institutions: the Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Security Council. The dataset allows researchers to trace patterns of agenda-setting, framing, institutional emphasis, and rhetorical change across more than two decades of Turkish foreign policy.

But the article also comes from a more practical and personal concern. When we started working on this project, we were not only interested in adding a new dataset to the study of Turkish foreign policy. We were also trying to think through a broader problem: how can we continue to study Turkish foreign policy empirically when access to decision-makers, officials, diplomats, and policy elites has become increasingly restricted?

One memory from the early phase of this project captures this tension well. During a fieldwork trip to Istanbul, one of us was staying on the European side of the city, while the other was living in Moda, on the Asian side. To meet and discuss the project, the journey meant taking the ferry across the Bosphorus. For those who live in Istanbul, this is simply part of daily life, an ordinary crossing between two continents. But for a researcher arriving in the city to conduct interviews, it is difficult not to see something more in that movement: Europe and Asia, routine and symbolism, daily life and geopolitical imagination, all condensed into a short commuter ride.

That morning, with fieldwork notes in hand and the city moving past, the problem became clearer. Turkish foreign policy is constantly moving, but the tools available to study it do not always move with it. Interviews, conversations, access to practitioners, and the slow accumulation of field knowledge remain essential. Yet they are also increasingly difficult to obtain. The ferry crossing became, in retrospect, a small metaphor for the project itself: if the terrain is shifting, researchers need tools capable of following the movement.

This is not a minor issue. Foreign policy analysis has traditionally relied on interviews, fieldwork, elite access, institutional archives, and informal conversations with practitioners. These methods remain essential. Yet in the Turkish case, and not only in Turkey, they have become harder to use. The centralization of foreign policy decision-making, the personalization of power, the shrinking space for institutional transparency, and the growing sensitivity of security-related debates have all made access more difficult. Researchers often face a lack of available material, fewer opportunities for interviews, and a more cautious environment in which officials may be unwilling or unable to speak openly.

This creates a generational problem as well. Many students and early-career researchers now ask how they can interact with diplomats, officers, officials, or practitioners in order to understand Turkish foreign policy from the inside. The answer, unfortunately, is that this is increasingly difficult. They do not always have the same opportunities that were available to earlier cohorts of researchers. When we first began studying Turkey, it was still possible to access certain conversations, attend events, speak with practitioners, and gradually build a sense of how institutions, ideas, and personal networks shaped policy. That space has not disappeared completely, but it has narrowed.

The TFPD was partly born out of this constraint. If access to officials becomes more limited, researchers need alternative ways of studying foreign policy systematically. Official documents are not a perfect substitute for interviews, archives, or fieldwork. But they are publicly available, longitudinal, comparable, and institutionally meaningful. They allow us to reconstruct how foreign policy is communicated, how priorities are framed, and how the state presents its role in the world over time. In this sense, the dataset is not only a technical resource. It is also an attempt to respond to changing research conditions.

The basic idea behind the project is simple: official statements matter. They do not tell us everything about foreign policy, and they should never be treated as transparent windows into decision-making. But they do reveal how a state chooses to present its priorities, justify its actions, frame international crises, and communicate with domestic and international audiences. In a country like Turkey, where foreign policy has become increasingly centralized and personalized, official discourse is not merely descriptive. It is also political. It legitimizes choices, constructs threats, signals intentions, and helps define Turkey’s place in the world.

This is especially important because Turkish foreign policy is often interpreted through major turning points: the AKP’s rise to power, the Arab uprisings, the Syrian war, the 2016 coup attempt, the transition to the presidential system, the S-400 crisis, the war in Ukraine, or the current reconfiguration of the Middle East. These are all essential moments. But they can also encourage a fragmented reading of Turkish foreign policy, in which each crisis appears as a separate episode. A longitudinal dataset helps us ask a different question: what changes, and what remains stable, in the language through which Turkey presents itself and its external priorities?

The preliminary analysis presented in the article points to some important patterns. The most frequent terms in the corpus reveal a dual structure in Turkish foreign policy discourse. On the one hand, words such as “visit,” “meeting,” “relations,” “bilateral,” and “cooperation” point to a diplomatic and engagement-oriented vocabulary. On the other hand, terms such as “security,” “terrorist,” “attack,” and “regional” reflect the centrality of threat perception and crisis management. This is not surprising, but it is analytically revealing. Turkey’s foreign policy discourse has long combined the language of cooperation with the language of insecurity. The country presents itself simultaneously as a diplomatic actor and as a state operating in a highly threatening environment.

This duality is visible in many of Turkey’s recent foreign policy choices. In Ukraine, Ankara has combined military support for Kyiv, especially through defense cooperation, with a refusal to fully align with Western sanctions against Moscow. It has hosted negotiations, supported the grain corridor, and maintained high-level communication with both sides. This posture is often described as active neutrality or strategic balancing. But from a discursive perspective, it also reflects a broader Turkish habit: presenting autonomy not as detachment from the West, but as the capacity to engage multiple sides at once.

Syria offers another example. For more than a decade, Syria has been one of the central theaters of Turkish foreign policy. It has combined border security, Kurdish politics, refugee management, military intervention, opposition support, and negotiations with Russia, Iran, the United States, and European actors. In the current post-Assad transition, Turkey is again positioned as an indispensable actor. Yet indispensability does not automatically mean coherence. Ankara’s Syria policy has moved across several phases: from early calls for regime change, to military containment, to normalization attempts, to renewed influence over post-conflict dynamics. Studying official discourse helps us understand how these shifts were framed, justified, and adapted over time.

This also matters for the debate on Turkey and Europe. In recent months and years, the question of Turkey’s place in the European security architecture has become more urgent. The war in Ukraine, the future of NATO, the rise of European defense initiatives, and the debate over industrial resilience have all pushed Turkey back into European strategic discussions. Yet Europe still lacks a clear political language to describe Turkey. Is it a partner, a candidate, a transactional actor, a security provider, a problem, or an indispensable outsider? Turkey, for its part, has also oscillated between claims of belonging to Europe, frustration with exclusion, and narratives of strategic autonomy beyond the West.

The TFPD can help researchers move beyond impressionistic readings of this relationship. By tracing references to the EU, NATO, the UN, and other international settings, the dataset allows us to study how Turkey’s institutional vocabulary has evolved. Has NATO become more central in moments of insecurity? Has the EU disappeared from Turkey’s official foreign policy language, or has it been reframed? Does Turkey speak about Europe mainly in terms of accession, economy, security, or double standards? These are questions that require systematic evidence, not only case-based interpretation.

Another contribution of the dataset is that it allows us to compare institutional voices within the Turkish foreign policy apparatus. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Presidency, and the National Security Council do not necessarily speak in the same way. MFA documents tend to reflect diplomatic routines, bilateral relations, visits, and institutional continuity. Presidential statements are more likely to capture leadership-centered communication, strategic messaging, and political framing. NSC statements, by contrast, are more concentrated around security, national threats, and regional developments. This institutional disaggregation is crucial in a political system where foreign policy decision-making has become increasingly centralized, but where different institutions still perform different communicative functions.

This point is particularly relevant for understanding the transformation of Turkish foreign policy under the presidential system. Over the past decade, foreign policy has become more directly tied to executive authority, domestic legitimation, and leadership narratives. This does not mean that all foreign policy decisions are reducible to domestic politics. But it does mean that official discourse often serves multiple audiences at once. A statement on Syria may be addressed to Washington, Moscow, Damascus, Brussels, the Turkish public, and domestic opposition actors at the same time. A speech on Gaza may simultaneously signal regional leadership, moral positioning, criticism of the West, and domestic political identity. A declaration on NATO may reassure allies while preserving the language of autonomy.

For this reason, the dataset should not be used mechanically. Word frequencies, topic models, and sentiment analysis cannot replace historical knowledge, field expertise, or qualitative interpretation. They cannot tell us, by themselves, why a decision was taken or whether a policy succeeded. But they can identify patterns that are otherwise difficult to see. They can show when certain themes rise or decline, when institutional vocabularies diverge, when regions become more prominent, and when official discourse shifts from cooperation to confrontation or from multilateralism to sovereignty.

In this sense, the TFPD is not meant to replace traditional Turkish foreign policy analysis. It is designed to complement it. The best use of the dataset is probably mixed-method: using computational tools to identify broader trends, and then returning to specific cases with qualitative depth. For example, a researcher could use the dataset to identify changes in Turkey’s discourse on NATO before and after the Ukraine war, then combine that with elite interviews, policy documents, and case analysis. Another could examine whether references to Africa, the Gulf, or Central Asia increased over time, and then connect those findings to Turkey’s economic diplomacy, defense exports, or humanitarian policy.

The broader relevance of the project goes beyond Turkey. International politics is increasingly shaped by narratives, signaling, and strategic communication. Middle powers and regional powers are not only acting differently; they are also describing their roles differently. They speak of autonomy, sovereignty, multipolarity, mediation, national interest, civilizational identity, and regional ownership. These are not empty words. They are part of how states construct room for maneuver in a fragmented order.

Turkey is one of the most important cases in this respect. Its foreign policy language reflects the tensions of the current international system: between alliance and autonomy, West and non-West, security and diplomacy, domestic politics and external strategy. To understand Turkey’s behavior, we need to listen carefully not only to what Ankara does, but also to how Ankara explains what it does.

That is what the Turkish Foreign Policy Dataset tries to make possible: a more systematic way of reading Turkish foreign policy through its own words. It is also an invitation to rethink how we study foreign policy in contexts where traditional access is shrinking. When interviews become harder, archives remain limited, and institutional channels are less open than before, official discourse becomes an even more important source of empirical evidence. Not because it tells the whole story, but because it gives us a structured way to begin asking better questions.

You can read the full article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14683849.2026.2665687

On March 25, 2026, Italy’s Chief of the Navy Vice Admiral Berutti Bergotto announced that the Italian Navy intends to procure Baykar’s Bayraktar TB3 unmanned aerial vehicle for operations aboard the aircraft carrier Cavour. The announcement was brief, almost technical. Its implications are anything but.

This is not the first time a European country has bought Turkish drones. Poland, Albania, and others have acquired the Bayraktar TB2, Baykar’s older and more famous platform. But the Italian case is structurally different, and understanding why requires looking beyond the hardware — and beyond the headlines.

A joint venture, not a purchase order

The vehicle for the TB3 acquisition is LBA Systems, a 50-50 joint venture between Leonardo and Baykar formalised in June 2025. Under this arrangement, Baykar’s full drone portfolio — the TB2, TB3, Akinci, and the jet-powered Kizilelma — will be manufactured at three sites across Italy: Grottaglie in the southeast, Ronchi dei Legionari in the northeast, and Villanova d’Albenga in the northwest. Leonardo contributes European certification pathways, mission systems integration, radar technology, and access to EU export markets. Baykar brings combat-tested platforms developed quickly, at scale, and at a cost that few Western competitors can match.

That is the key distinction. When the Italian Navy procures the TB3, it won’t be importing a foreign product. It will be buying something partly made at home, by a company in which one of Italy’s most strategically important industrial groups holds an equal stake. That distinction matters enormously, both industrially and politically.

Leonardo’s own Industrial Plan, presented in Rome in March 2026, makes this explicit: LBA Systems is listed as one of four core drivers for Aeronautics order growth through 2030, with projected revenues in that segment rising from €3.6 billion to €5.5 billion. Unmanned systems now sit in the same product portfolio as the Eurofighter and the next-generation GCAP combat aircraft. Baykar is not a supplier. It is a structural partner embedded in the financial architecture of one of Europe’s largest defence contractors.

That shifts the nature of the relationship. The relevant question is no longer whether Europe is willing to buy Turkish systems. It is whether Europe is prepared to recognise that parts of its future airpower ecosystem may now be co-produced with Turkey.

The TB3 and the changing logic of carrier power

The Bayraktar TB3 was designed from the outset for short-deck carrier operations. It combines folding wings for easier storage, reinforced landing gear for maritime use, autonomous take-off and landing, satellite communications for beyond-line-of-sight missions, endurance of up to 24 hours, and a payload of up to 280 kilograms. It has already completed flight operations from Turkey’s TCG Anadolu. Italy’s Cavour is the next logical step.

Yet the importance of the TB3 lies less in its specifications than in what it allows the Italian Navy to do.

For Rome, embarking a carrier-capable drone is not simply a technological add-on. It answers a real operational need. The Italian Navy is moving toward a more flexible, layered air wing, in which unmanned systems can expand surveillance, targeting, persistence, and light-strike capacity without imposing the costs, constraints, and risks of manned aviation. In practice, the TB3 is expected to complement — and partly replace — the helicopter component of the Cavour’s air wing, rather than compete with the F-35B. That is an important distinction. The drone does not displace high-end naval aviation; it makes the carrier more usable across a wider spectrum of missions.

This matters because the maritime threat environment is changing faster than many European navies have been willing to admit. Large-deck capital ships remain formidable instruments of sea-based power projection. But they are also increasingly exposed. The spread of anti-ship ballistic missiles, long-range precision strike systems, loitering munitions, and more capable reconnaissance-strike complexes has altered the risk calculus around concentrated naval power. In the Middle East, Iran’s investments in systems such as Khalij Fars, Hormuz-1, Hormuz-2, and Zolfaqar Basir are only one part of a larger pattern. Across contested theatres, large surface combatants are becoming more trackable, more targetable, and potentially more vulnerable.[RG1]

The March 2026 fire aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford did not create this debate, but it added urgency to it. The issue is not whether aircraft carriers are obsolete. They are not. The issue is that the composition of carrier air power is changing alongside the threat.

This is where platforms like the TB3 enter the picture. They offer persistence rather than speed, distribution rather than concentration, and lower-cost operational mass rather than exquisite performance. They do not replace fifth-generation fighters. They give medium naval powers a more sustainable way to maintain airborne presence, conduct ISR, support maritime strike chains, and operate in grey-zone or medium-intensity environments without committing their most expensive assets to every mission.

That, in turn, points to a broader transformation in naval warfare. For decades, credible carrier aviation remained the preserve of a very small group of major naval powers, because operating large-deck carriers and manned air wings required extraordinary financial, doctrinal, and industrial depth. That threshold is now lowering. The convergence of smaller carriers and more capable unmanned systems is creating a different model of sea-based airpower — one more accessible to medium powers and more adaptable to specific theaters.

This is not a supercarrier model in miniature. It is a different operational logic altogether. Smaller decks equipped with UAVs and, eventually, UCAVs offer distributed and scalable airpower at lower cost and with a different risk profile. In that sense, the TB3 is not just a new platform for Cavour. It is part of a wider redefinition of what carrier aviation can look like in the hands of second-tier but ambitious naval powers.

Italy is not the only country exploring this space[FS2] . The United Kingdom and Japan, both operators of short-deck carriers and both GCAP partners, are also natural candidates for similar solutions[RG3] . Baykar has already engaged both. The Italian move, then, may be less an isolated choice than the beginning of a wider trend.

From naval drones to collaborative combat

If the TB3 points to the future of carrier aviation, the M-346–Kizilelma pairing points to something even more consequential: Italy’s entry into manned-unmanned teaming, or MUM-T.

Leonardo has announced that by mid-2026 it will conduct a flight demonstration in which an M-346 will control two Baykar-built unmanned combat aircraft. This will be the first such demonstration for Italy and one of the earliest of its kind in the world outside a very limited group of countries. Over the past year, only a handful of actors — including the United States, Australia, and Turkey — have moved from concept discussions to meaningful demonstrations of collaborative combat models involving crewed aircraft and high-performance drones.

That alone would make the Italian test notable. But its significance lies in the fact that Leonardo is not proposing a distant, post-GCAP concept. It is attempting to build a usable architecture now, with aircraft already in or near service and with an industrial base already being assembled on Italian soil.

The choice of the M-346 is revealing. In its fighter-attack configuration, it is not just an advanced trainer but a flexible light combat aircraft with enough connectivity, mission management capacity, and operational relevance to serve as a credible “mother aircraft.” Its tandem-seat arrangement is especially useful in this role, because it allows one crew member to focus on piloting and tactical flying while the other manages unmanned teammates and mission coordination.

But the M-346 may matter for another reason too. Over time, it may not only serve as the crewed controller of adjunct drones; it could itself evolve into a lower-cost collaborative combat asset within broader teamed architectures. In other words, it could become not just the bridge to future CCAs, but part of that ecosystem in its own right — especially for air forces that cannot afford to structure all their teaming concepts around premium stealth platforms alone.

The unmanned half of this equation is Kizilelma. And Kizilelma is not simply another MALE drone with a more aggressive design. It is a jet-powered combat UAV that has been moving with notable speed from prototype status toward a more credible strike and counter-air role.

Over the past months, Baykar has announced a series of developments that are strategically relevant. In October 2025, Kizilelma achieved direct hits in its first live-fire tests using TOLUN and TEBER-82 precision-guided munitions, marking its progression into the precision-strike domain. By late 2025, the platform had also advanced into air-to-air testing. According to Baykar’s own reporting, Kizilelma detected a target through ASELSAN’s MURAD AESA radar and fired a GÖKDOĞAN beyond-visual-range missile, while an earlier November test involved locking onto an F-16 and scoring a direct hit in simulated fire. Follow-on reporting has also pointed to LGK-82 integration, widening the platform’s menu of guided strike options.

Taken together, the public record suggests a platform being prepared not merely for reconnaissance, decoy, or secondary strike functions, but for real combat tasks in increasingly contested environments. That is precisely why the M-346–Kizilelma demonstration matters. Leonardo is not pairing a pilot with a disposable drone. It is exploring a relationship between a crewed aircraft and a combat-capable unmanned wingman.

For now, the most obvious long-term reference point is GCAP. Loyal wingman concepts and collaborative combat aircraft are already central to how sixth-generation airpower is being imagined. The M-346–Kizilelma test, therefore, serves as an early operational and industrial stepping stone toward that future. But it would be a mistake to see the concept as relevant only to GCAP.

In reality, an architecture of this kind could also be integrated far earlier with existing fleets. F-35s and Typhoons are both plausible future teammates for adjunct systems of this kind, especially if the goal is to extend sensor reach, distribute risk, or generate mass in contested environments. Here, Turkey’s own experience is relevant: Kizilelma’s interactions with Turkish F-16s already suggest a path toward mixed crewed-uncrewed operations built around legacy and next-generation fighters alike. The broader lesson is that collaborative combat is not something that begins only once sixth-generation aircraft arrive. It can start with the fleets Europe already has.

Operationally, this opens a wide set of possibilities. A crewed aircraft could remain further from the densest threat zone while unmanned teammates move forward for ISR, stand-in strike, decoy functions, suppression support, or battle damage assessment. In an air-defense role, they could widen radar and missile coverage. In a maritime scenario, they could support targeting chains and distributed surveillance. In each case, the aim is the same: to increase combat mass and flexibility without multiplying the cost of manned fleets.[RG4]

This is also where the LBA Systems partnership takes on a different meaning. The same industrial structure that supports TB3 production for naval use is also laying the basis for a European-certified, Italian-based route into collaborative combat aviation. The naval drone and the loyal wingman are not separate stories. They are part of the same underlying shift.

The blind spot in Europe’s defence debate

Europe’s defence debate in 2026 is full of the right vocabulary: rearmament, strategic autonomy, resilience, reduced dependence on the United States, faster procurement and stronger industrial capacity. But it continues to avoid one increasingly obvious fact.

The relationship between parts of the European defence industry and Baykar is no longer hypothetical, occasional, or politically marginal. It is structural. It is already reflected in industrial plans, production facilities, naval procurement decisions, and future air-combat experiments involving one of NATO Europe’s most important defence companies.

What is still missing is an honest political framework for understanding what that means.

The European Union has no real mechanism for addressing a relationship of this kind. There is no serious common framework for evaluating what deeper integration with the Turkish defence industry means for technology transfer, certification, export controls, operational dependence, interoperability standards, or, more broadly, Turkey’s place within European security architecture. And yet the integration is moving forward anyway — platform by platform, site by site, venture by venture.

That is the real contradiction. Turkey remains outside the EU, its accession path frozen and its relationship with several member states politically fraught. Yet at the industrial and military level, a quieter form of integration is accelerating.

At some point, that gap between political ambiguity and military-industrial reality will become too large to ignore. When Italian sailors operate Turkish-designed drones from an Italian aircraft carrier, when those systems are maintained and upgraded in Italy, when their sensors, data links, and mission systems are co-developed with Leonardo, and when the same industrial partnership begins to shape Europe’s first experiments in collaborative combat aviation, the relationship changes in kind. It is no longer a transaction. It is the beginning of a strategic interdependence.

And that raises the question Europe still prefers not to ask. Not whether to engage Turkey in defense. That decision is already being made in practice. The real question is whether Europe is willing to give that engagement a strategic and political framework equal to what it has already become.

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If you read international media lately—especially the Italian and some other European press—you’d get the impression that nobody really understands what Turkey is doing diplomatically. Ankara gets cast as either a bit-part player or an opportunist: useful one minute, annoying the next. Rarely does anyone treat it as a serious diplomatic force in its own right.

But that’s not what we’re seeing in practice. Over the past few years, the evidence points in a different direction. Turkey isn’t marginal or making things up as it goes. It has built real channels, developed genuine expertise in mediation, and consistently found its way into crises where other countries simply don’t have the access or the flexibility to operate.

Part of this comes down to geography and strategy, yes. But there’s much more to it. Figures like Hakan Fidan and Ibrahim Kalın—both deeply experienced in Middle Eastern politics and with networks that run through the entire region—have shaped a distinctly Turkish approach to diplomacy. It’s personal, it’s security-focused, and it’s grounded in how regional politics actually work. These aren’t diplomats working from a rulebook; they’re players who understand the game because they’ve lived in it.

The Problem with How We See Turkey

Some of the confusion is analytical. We still tend to see Turkey through outdated lenses: a difficult NATO member that causes headaches in Brussels, an increasingly authoritarian government at home, and a state that just reacts to events and cuts deals when it suits them. None of these observations is entirely unfair. But they don’t tell the whole story. In fact, they prevent us from seeing something crucial: that mediation has become a real tool of Turkish statecraft. An approach that we could label as a genuine strategy.

Part of it is also political, and this matters more than policymakers usually admit. Turkey’s domestic problems have inevitably shaped its image abroad. The erosion of democracy, the consolidation of power around Erdoğan, the pressure on opposition figures, the broader authoritarian turn, have taken a toll on how Europe and others perceive Turkey. The damage goes beyond just moral judgment. It actually warps how people interpret what Turkey does internationally. In Europe especially, domestic authoritarianism has become the filter through which everything else gets read. The result is that Turkey appears as unreliable, problematic, and morally questionable. But not as competent. Not as diplomatically capable. That’s a mistake—and an important one.

What Actually Happened

Look at what’s actually happened: Turkey’s role as a mediator has become too big, too consistent, and too deliberate to dismiss as improvisation or luck. Let’s take a quick look at the record. In 2010, Turkey was a key player in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. More recently, when Russia and Ukraine were locked in a war that threatened global food supplies, it was Turkey that brokered the Black Sea grain corridor—a deal that kept millions of people from starving. Before that, Turkey inserted itself into crises in Somalia. And more recently, during the Gaza conflict, Turkey has once again positioned itself as a diplomatic player.

These aren’t isolated episodes. Taken together they shape a clear pattern. Turkey keeps showing up in diplomatic spaces that others simply can’t access. Sometimes that’s because of its NATO membership, which gives it credibility with the West. Sometimes it’s because of its relationships with regional powers and non-state actors that Western countries can’t openly engage with. Hamas is a clear example here. The point is: Turkey has become something strategic—not always a neutral mediator in the traditional sense, because often it isn’t. But it’s become a state that leverages its position, its networks, and its geography to make itself essential when crises hit. It uses access, ambiguity, political networks, and strategic geography. These are tools, and Turkey has learned to use them well.

The Iran Dimension

What we’re witnessing with Iran right now shows this strategy in real time. When U.S.-Iranian tensions escalated dramatically in early 2026, with Washington’s military posture hardening and rhetoric intensifying on both sides, Turkey stepped into the diplomatic void. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan began conducting back-channel conversations between Tehran and Washington. These weren’t formal negotiations, but something more delicate: conveying positions, testing flexibility, and keeping communication alive when official channels had frozen over.

Simultaneously, Ankara fanned out across the Middle East. Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari, and Pakistani officials found themselves receiving visits or calls from Turkish counterparts, all pressing the same message: escalation benefits nobody. Turkey’s involvement here wasn’t about being a neutral referee. It was about leveraging the one thing Ankara possesses that few others do, meaning the ability to sit at multiple tables without losing its seat at any of them. As a NATO member, Turkey has Washington’s attention. As a country sharing a border with Iran and maintaining diplomatic channels there, it has Tehran’s ear (not trust). That combination is rare, and in a moment of crisis, it’s actually a valuable asset.

This is what geopolitical leverage actually looks like when you’re positioned between superpowers and regional powers. And it’s precisely why Turkey’s approach to mediation isn’t a tactic deployed intermittently, but rather the foundation of how Ankara now operates on the international stage. The Iran crisis is just the latest demonstration of a pattern that has become fundamental to Turkish statecraft. Whether Europe finally recognises this as a diplomatic asset rather than as evidence of untrustworthiness remains to be seen.

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Today’s joint US–Israel airstrikes on Iran pile onto Turkey’s already overflowing plate—a Middle East in complete reshuffle from Syria’s post-Assad vacuum and Gaza’s devastation, compounded by domestic fires like 70%+ inflation, currency crisis, and a PKK peace process hanging by a thread. Thrust into this familiar yet precarious position, one striking paradox emerges: while roughly 60% of Turks polled in early 2026 favor regime change in Iran—spanning government supporters (AKP at 65%, MHP at 62%) to opposition (DEM at 58%)—Ankara’s official line remains firmly opposed to military intervention, prioritizing diplomacy and sovereignty. This disconnect, illuminated by recent surveys and reports like IstanPol’s January analysis of Turkish foreign policy perceptions, reveals deeper tensions in how Turkey navigates crises: a hawkish public sentiment clashing with a pragmatic elite calculus.

The MetroPOLL survey captures a cross-partisan frustration with Iran’s regime, rooted less in secular-versus-religious divides and more in Tehran’s support for the PKK—a core grievance for many Turks. Iran’s perceived covert aid to PKK—backing the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Sinjar and sheltering militants in Qandil—fuels widespread Turkish resentment per official accusations. This security threat, intertwined with Syria’s chaos and refugee burdens from Assad’s fall (which 57% credit to Turkish influence), amplifies public calls for change. Pro-government voters see Erdogan’s firmness as elevating Turkey’s clout, yet even they sense limits in confronting Tehran directly. Opposition voices decry the “personality-driven” policy as inconsistent and yearn for principled multilateralism.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan wasted no time, separately calling his counterparts in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Syria, Egypt, and Indonesia to coordinate steps toward de-escalation and crisis management—exemplifying Ankara’s preferred multilateral shuttle diplomacy over unilateral confrontation. These moves come as Ankara juggles multiple infernos: not just Iran’s retaliation risks, but Syria’s fragile new order (despite Turkey’s strong position in the post-Assad Syria), Iraq’s realignments, and Gaza’s unresolved agony—each demanding diplomatic oxygen while the home front boils over soaring costs of living and PKK talks that could either solidify or shatter domestic security.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed the crisis on February 28, 2026 (20:17, updated 20:45), expressing deep regret over US-Israel attacks that “disturbed the peace of the Iranian people” while calling Iran’s Gulf strikes “unacceptable.” He warned “our region faces a ring of fire” without common sense, urging the Islamic world to act urgently for a ceasefire and negotiations, blaming Israel’s process-poisoning actions and prior failed talks with Trump and Pezeshkian. Erdoğan confirmed intensive diplomatic contacts and full border/airspace security by military, gendarmerie, police, and intelligence.

Yet the government’s stance has remained anchored in de-escalation, consistent with earlier signals from senior officials that the risk of a wider confrontation was rising. Ankara’s messaging tends to place Israel at the center of escalation dynamics, portraying Israeli actions as likely to trigger a regional spiral that would constrain diplomatic options and weaken mediation channels. This framing also serves a domestic function: it allows the leadership to align with strong public sensitivities around Gaza while keeping the focus on preventing a war that could reverberate across Turkey’s immediate neighborhood. At the same time, Turkish rhetoric does not necessarily imply strategic alignment with Tehran. Rather, it reflects a preference to interpret the crisis through the lens of escalation control and regional spillover management, even as public opinion shows significant frustration with Iran’s regional behavior.

In practice, Ankara’s opposition to strikes is better understood as a risk calculus than as sympathy for the Iranian regime. Turkish decision-makers have long treated scenarios of rapid destabilization in Iran as inherently costly: they could intensify PKK-related security pressures, generate new migrant displacement dynamics, disrupt energy and transit routes, and empower armed networks along Turkey’s periphery. This gap between a more punitive public mood toward Tehran and an elite emphasis on containment is not new. Recent assessments of Turkish foreign policy perceptions describe these debates as identity-laden and domestically mediated, where external crises are quickly absorbed into internal political narratives. The NATO AWACS presence adds another layer to this balancing act. Operating as part of NATO’s airborne early-warning mission, these aircraft support situational awareness on Turkey’s southern flank by monitoring air and maritime activity and providing early warning in volatile periods (a shift from the Black Sea to the Middle East). Ankara can present this as alliance reassurance and defensive preparedness, while still drawing clear political lines against participation in offensive operations. This even though the military operation does not have any NATO involvement.

Trkiye-Iran relations embody pragmatic coexistence amid structural rivalry, with Tehran’s regional setbacks—the 12-Day War defeats, the Assad regime's collapse, and the weakening of the “axis of resistance”—contrasting Ankara’s gains in Syria, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Gulf partnerships. Competition persists over post-Assad Syria’s governance, Zangezur Corridor connectivity challenging Iran’s North-South axis, Iraq’s economic corridors, and influence in Yemen/Sudan where Turkey’s mediation expands. Iran’s “Iran First” inward pivot limits confrontation, enabling functional cooperation on PKK/PJAK while preserving Ankara’s dynamic equilibrium against escalation risks.

Scenarios ahead feel plausible rather than predictive. Ankara could lean into its emerging mediator role—already shuttling between Washington and Tehran to safeguard trade corridors and counter PKK threats, fitting its crisis-manager self-image. While Iran may resist direct talks with Washington, Turkey is poised as vital intermediary, leveraging NATO commitments to frame enhanced AWACS surveillance as defensive assurance, maintaining plausible deniability while facilitating de-escalation channels.

Ankara might also grudgingly host expanded US surveillance to balance alliance ties with public restraint calls, as today’s Communications Directorate denial—dismissing base access rumors as “baseless disinformation”—entrenches its sovereignty line: no operational use by outsiders, period. Escalation risks a tighter squeeze from US basing pressure versus Iran’s economic levers and PKK proxies, all amid domestic economic pressures and fragile PKK talks. Least likely remains open regime change endorsement—too destabilizing despite popular appeal.

Ultimately, today’s strikes test Turkey’s resilience amid clashing domestic impulses and regional realities. Public support for upending Iran—spanning partisan lines and rooted in accumulated grievances over security threats like PKK facilitation, Syrian spillovers, refugee burdens, and economic strains—signals a latent readiness for bolder postures, yet it coexists with widespread war fatigue and pragmatic elite priorities. Ankara’s calculus weighs enduring ties with Tehran (energy security, border stability, trade continuity) against NATO obligations and mounting US pressure, all while domestic polarization—government backers praising Erdogan’s firm leadership, opposition demanding institutional consistency and multilateralism—constrains rash moves. Iran’s potential retaliation carries risks for the fragile PKK peace process—possibly emboldening PKK activity—but Ankara retains strong countermeasures to manage this threat alongside its regional positioning. The public-elite rift, illuminated by recent polls and reports like IstanPol’s analysis, underscores a nation hawkish on principle yet cautious in practice.

Ankara’s response will also unfold against a wider canvas of realignment, where Turkey appears to be edging back toward its Western moorings under Trump’s second presidency. This shift is evident beyond Iran, in renewed engagement across northern Iraq—cooperation with BP in the Kirkuk fields, once part of Russia’s informal sphere of influence. Such moves signal Turkey donning its NATO hat more assertively, mirroring Iraq’s pivot to Western firms to dilute Iranian leverage. Yet this Western tilt carries costs: Turkey’s loss of venue status for Russia-Ukraine peace talks suggests that Moscow no longer views Ankara as sufficiently neutral, amid Ankara’s increased support for Kyiv. As key states along old East-West fault lines quietly reposition toward Washington and London, Turkey’s choices on Iran could accelerate this trend—calibrated mediation preserving flexibility, quiet alignment shifts cementing Western reintegration, or rhetorical adaptation bridging the home-front divide. In this cascade of realignments, Ankara’s path will define not just its Iran stance but its enduring geopolitical identity.