West Asia is in turmoil: Iran fighting one of its toughest battles for survival, the bubble of Emirati ‘safe haven’ now gone, global energy supply in shambles, and the world at its farthest to reach a resolution to the crisis.
The conflict, which inarguably sparked in October 2023 when Israel retaliated to Hamas attack, has now engulfed several states in the region, including Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran.
While the conflict has spread to the wider region, sending shockwaves around the globe, a nation in a geopolitical hotbed has remained silent.
Turkey shares borders with Syria, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan — each of which has either been embroiled in conflict or continues to grapple with one in recent years.
But Ankara, which has often sought to meddle in other countries and their contesting issues, has remained silent as the US-Iran war continues, triggering global anxiety.
The reason is not so simple to understand, and harder to articulate, given Turkey’s troubled chapters in the 1920s and its complicated relations in the region.
US-Iran war divided the world, sketched new ties
When Russia started a war in Ukraine in 2022, the global powers were divided on obvious lines: The West, comprising the US and Europe, with Ukraine, while Russia was left with allies like Belarus, Iran and arms support from Turkey and China.
Four years later, the boundary is too hard to decipher. When the US launched the war in Iran with Israel, the European and NATO allies abandoned President Donald Trump, while the West Asian countries fell in line with Washington. Iran was left isolated, with some support from its proxies in Yemen and Lebanon. China too backed Iran, but the arms aid was a memento, making little changes on the battlefront.
Turkey, in the past 30 months, has played the high-stakes balancing act: it does not want to isolate the West Asia affair, yet wants to stay aloof from it. Turkey has not supported the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, unlike the West Asian states. However, the isolation has nothing to do with its proximity to Iran, but the contrary: Ankara has had a complicated relationship with Iran going on for centuries.
Turkey has limited control over the risks posed by this war and even less influence over the outcome. Some experts, however, attribute it to the different objectives of the US and Israel in the ongoing conflict with Iran.
“Turkey is to some extent supporting the American point of view that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. And for that, they have offered multiple forums and multiple options also to keep Iran away from nuclear weapons,” Omair Anas, an expert on Turkey, and an Assistant Professor at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, told Hindustan Times.
Anas maintained that Turkey has expressed its reservations to the Trump administration that it does not view the Israeli point of view favourably because the “Israeli point of view is only to destabilise Iran and the region”.
A fatal flaw
Until recently, Turkey has openly supported the ouster of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, backing Azerbaijan against Armenia and openly attacked the rebel Kurdish militia.
So, why did the country suddenly fall silent in the last few months? Part of this reservation in the ongoing conflict had to do with the country’s history and a fatal flaw that led its destiny in the past decades.
During the First World War, Turkey’s Ottoman predecessors picked the wrong side, which led to the collapse of the empire. A century later, a resurgent Turkey is returning to its Ottoman roots, with Erdogan posing as the leader in the subcontinent in the Eurasian balance of power.
However, the ambitious plans remain crippled with domestic challenges: anti-incumbency, falling economy, depreciating currency, and youth unemployment.
“The election is still very far, in 2029. However, the domestic situation is not good and the economic condition is not as great as it was for some years before. At the same time, Turkey does have a stable political and security situation, so there are no immediate destabilising events,” believes Anas.
An expansionist rival lurks near
The one big challenge that Turkey faces is not the Kurdish separatism or falling economy, but a country with territorial ambitions. Ever since the Gaza war began, Israel has been on an acquisition spree, attaching neighbours and expanding its military footprint in the region.
Israel’s land invasion of Lebanon became a key contention during the US-Iran peace talks. It holds more land in Gaza than it did a few months ago and is going beyond the Golan disengagement lines into southern Syria after Assad’s fall. The development is not ignored by Turkey, which remains alert against its expansionist policy.
“Turkey is completely informed of Israel’s expansionist moves. However, Turkey does not want to deal with this question with any confrontational approach, but is rather trying to pursue and convince the American administration to discourage Israel from further expansionism and destabilising activities across the region,” Omair Anas said.
Turkey does not want a direct confrontation with Israel, but at the same time Israelis know that in case of a confrontation, it will be the one to gain more, he added.
With the Game of Thrones underway in West Asia, the participants have little to gain and much to lose. There have been no clear winners, even as the list of setbacks and losses exceeds expectations.
Meanwhile, Turkey is no longer the economy that it once boasted of a decade ago. Though Erdogan managed to consolidate power over the first decade with clear signs during the 2016 coup, his new Ottoman dreams have few takers. In this environment, the realistic and clever strategy to be hoped for is to wait and let the storm pass over.
