When the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28, Türkiye did not hesitate to stake out its position. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the strikes as a violation of Iranian sovereignty and closed Turkish airspace to American combat operations. Yet in the same breath, Ankara denounced Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone barrages on Gulf Cooperation Council states as “incredibly wrong” and “unacceptable, regardless of the reason.” Türkiye, as Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan made clear, was against the war—but it was no one’s ally in it.
This careful straddling act, in which Ankara views de-escalation as the only way out of the conflict, is not mere fence-sitting. It represents a deliberate strategic posture with profound implications for Türkiye’s security, its relationship with the Gulf, and the emerging regional order after Iran.
A War That Threatens Türkiye Without Targeting It
Türkiye’s response to the war has been defined by relentless diplomacy. Fidan has been engaged in continuous shuttle diplomacy between Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Tehran, and Washington since the conflict erupted. Critically, Ankara has encouraged the Gulf states to maintain their self-restraint and not to join the war against Iran, while simultaneously pressing Tehran to halt its attacks on GCC countries.
The most tangible expression of this effort came on March 29, when foreign ministers of Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan convened in Islamabad for what officials described as the most coordinated regional effort yet to push Washington and Tehran toward direct talks. The quartet is now working to align regional positions on ceasefire sequencing and bridge the gap between Washington’s 15-point demands and Tehran’s five-point counter-proposal. China’s backing of the initiative and Trump’s tacit endorsement of Pakistan’s mediating role suggest this diplomatic track has potential traction.
For all its diplomatic agility, Ankara faces a cascade of threats it cannot fully control. The most immediate is territorial. Four Iranian ballistic missiles have entered Turkish airspace since the war began, all intercepted by NATO defense systems, but each one is a reminder that geography alone makes Türkiye vulnerable. The incidents forced Erdogan to issue direct warnings to Tehran, with Fidan telling his Iranian counterpart that next time, Türkiye would respond in kind.
The potential participation of Kurdish militias represents a deeper, more structural danger. Israel has been encouraging a scenario in which the U.S. arms Iranian Kurdish groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK)—the Iranian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Türkiye’s fragile peace process with the PKK, built around Abdullah Öcalan’s—the group’s imprisoned leader—call for disarmament, could unravel if empowered Kurdish militias emerge on its eastern border. Although Washington has appeared to have dropped the idea, Turkish officials remain skeptical, aware that a prolonged war could encourage an Israeli-American revisiting of the Kurdish option as a ground proxy.
Then there is the economic dimension. Türkiye imports more than two-thirds of its energy—including 13 percent of its natural gas imports from Iran itself—and Tehran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent crude oil prices skyrocketing. With annual inflation already running at 32 percent, the energy shock is compounding a cost-of-living crisis that threatens the government’s position. In fact, the war erupted just when Türkiye’s overall economic situation was recovering. If the situation inside Iran deteriorates further and pushes a wave of Iranian refugees toward Türkiye’s borders—a scenario that haunts policymakers who spent a decade managing millions of displaced Syrians—it would further strain public patience and upset Turkish domestic politics.
The Türkiye-Israel Rivalry Sharpens
Perhaps the most consequential long-term risk is the growing belligerency of Israeli political and security elites toward Türkiye itself. Several Israeli officials have already labeled Turkish- Qatari ties as a “threat.” Not long after the bombs started falling on Iran, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was warning publicly that Türkiye was forming an axis “similar to the Iranian one” and that Israel must prepare to confront Ankara alongside Tehran. He described Erdogan as “a sophisticated and dangerous adversary who wants to surround Israel.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, has floated a “hexagon” of alliances—including Greece, Cyprus, and India—to counter what he called a “radical Sunni axis.” Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has identified Türkiye as the power best positioned to fill the vacuum left by Iran.
For Ankara, these are not idle threats. Israel’s hegemonic doctrine is to achieve security not through balance but through dominance. With Iran now significantly degraded, Türkiye emerges as the only remaining power with the military capability, economic weight, and ideological reach to challenge Israeli primacy. Unlike Iran, whose Shia ideology limited its appeal to most Arabs and Muslims, Türkiye can lay claim to cultural and historical legitimacy across the Muslim world. Its Ottoman heritage, NATO membership, G20 economy, and burgeoning defense industry make it a far more formidable long-term competitor than Iran ever was.
This is precisely why the war’s outcome matters so much to Ankara. A post-war Iran aligned with Washington and Tel Aviv would not just remove a rival; it would create an Israeli-American strategic corridor from the Mediterranean to Central Asia, with Türkiye squeezed between hostile or compliant neighbors. The nuclear question adds another layer: Iran ultimately had no nuclear capability to deter against an attack on its sovereignty and the dismantling of its military infrastructure. This is now fueling debate within Türkiye about the necessity of having a nuclear deterrent of its own.
The GCC After Iran: Türkiye’s Opportunity
Yet within these risks lies a generational opening. Iran’s strategy to retaliate against the U.S. by striking Gulf states—countries that are not even combatants—has fundamentally broken the GCC-Iran relationship. The United Arab Emirates has shut its embassy in Tehran. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have expelled Iranian officials. Gulf governments have formally accused Iran at the UN Human Rights Council of gross violations of sovereignty. The era of pragmatic Gulf-Iran engagement, painstakingly rebuilt after the 2017 Qatar crisis and the 2023 Saudi-Iran rapprochement brokered by China, is over.
This rupture creates a structural vacancy in Gulf security thinking. The U.S. security umbrella has proven unreliable—Washington’s dismissiveness of Gulf vulnerabilities, combined with the Abraham Accords’ failure to shield its signatories, has eroded confidence in the existing security architecture. Gulf states will not abandon their relationship with the U.S., but they will deepen their diversification strategy. And there is no better candidate for that diversification than Türkiye.
The foundations are already laid. Türkiye maintains a permanent military base in Qatar—its first overseas installation. The UAE-Türkiye Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement aims to generate over $40 billion in trade. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are among Türkiye’s largest defense clients, with Riyadh reportedly in final-stage discussions to join the KAAN fifth-generation stealth fighter program—which would make it the first Gulf state with a stake in an advanced combat aircraft project outside direct American control. Ankara is also negotiating a free trade agreement with the entire GCC bloc.
If Türkiye’s diplomatic efforts yield a ceasefire or facilitate U.S.-Iran talks, the payoff would extend beyond prestige. It would validate Ankara’s model of regional security ownership—the proposition that Middle Eastern states should manage their own security architecture rather than outsource it to Washington. This vision, which Türkiye and the Gulf states had been quietly building around trade and diplomacy before the war, now has the urgency of lived experience behind it.
Navigating the Minefield
The path ahead is anything but guaranteed. Türkiye must manage a weakened or collapsed Iran on its border, deter Israeli provocations without triggering escalation, maintain its NATO standing while resisting Washington’s preferred regional order, and keep its own economy from buckling under energy shocks, inflation, and regional instability. The Kurdish peace process, Erdogan’s most ambitious domestic gambit, hangs in the balance.
But the war has clarified something that was previously only an underlying trend. Türkiye and the Gulf states share more strategic interests with each other than either does with the external powers currently prosecuting the war. The question is whether Ankara can convert this emerging alignment into an institutional architecture involving defense pacts, integrated air and missile defense, joint industrial production, and a common diplomatic front. If it can, the Iran war will mark the beginning of a genuinely new Middle Eastern order. If not, it will simply be the prelude to another imposed from outside.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.
