The American and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 have altered the regional balance in ways that extend far beyond Tehran. The immediate debate revolves around escalation, retaliation, regime survival, and the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Yet the second-order effects may prove equally consequential. Among regional powers, Turkey stands to see its relative strategic weight increase significantly. When one pole of regional power projection is weakened, the value of the remaining capable actors rises.
As Iran’s ability to project power through Iraq, Syria, and the Levant is degraded, Turkey becomes—by geography, force posture, and NATO membership—the most capable non-Arab Muslim power adjacent to multiple theaters: the Levant, the Caucasus, the Black Sea, the Gulf, and Northern Africa. Turkish foreign policy over the past two decades has consistently sought to convert regional turbulence into bargaining power with competing poles. The current moment is no exception.
Ankara’s diplomacy is deliberately multi-layered, theorized under the label of “strategic depth” by former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and operationalized, despite the personal rupture, by President Erdoğan ever since. It presents different versions of Turkey to different audiences. To Washington, it is the indispensable NATO platform—anchored at Incirlik, leveraging the Montreux Convention in the Black Sea, and embedded in counter-terrorism frameworks. To Europe, it remains the migration buffer, structurally central to the continent’s externalized border management. To Russia, it is an energy corridor and pragmatic interlocutor. To China, it markets itself as the western anchor of the Middle Corridor linking Asia to Europe. And to the Gulf monarchies, it signals that it can manage political Islam while offering defense cooperation and investment partnerships. This flexibility is the operating doctrine of Turkish statecraft.
For four decades, Iran positioned itself as the epicenter of “resistance”—opposition to Israel, American primacy, and Western-aligned Arab regimes. The strikes have not erased that narrative, but they have disrupted its institutional anchor. In the Middle East, narratives rarely disappear; they relocate. The contest now concerns who frames the post-Iranian moment.
President Erdoğan has long attempted to speak to what is often called the “Muslim street.” Through religious diplomacy, media networks, and ideological affinities with movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Ankara has built a broad communications architecture across parts of the Sunni world. This reflects both neo-Ottoman nostalgia and hard-headed status maximization. In periods of crisis, moral posture becomes a political asset. Condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza and of the strikes against Iran resonates regionally, even as Turkey remains embedded in NATO and economically tied to Western markets.
This duality defines contemporary Turkish strategy. Ankara can denounce Israeli actions in the language of dignity while quietly maintaining working relations with Washington and European capitals. After February 28, that balancing act becomes more valuable. Turkey need not celebrate Iran’s weakening; it needs only to convert instability into leverage.
Yet Erdoğan is navigating significant domestic pressures alongside the external opportunity. Economic fragility and an electorate with strong sympathies for Gaza and for the resistance narrative all shape his room for maneuver. His foreign policy positioning is driven by domestic politics. The line between strategic calculation and political performance is, in Turkish foreign policy, deliberately blurred.
Iran’s weakening does not simply elevate Turkey’s standing vis-à-vis the West. It sharpens structural competition with Israel. Nowhere is this clearer than in Syria. Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Ankara has consolidated influence across large swathes of northern Syria, cultivating local authorities and maintaining a durable military presence, including thousands of troops embedded in Idlib alongside affiliated formations. Israel, meanwhile, has intensified operations to preserve freedom of action and prevent hostile consolidation near its northern borders. A delicate deconfliction mechanism has emerged between two states that distrust each other yet seek to avoid direct confrontation.
Jerusalem may welcome the erosion of Iranian influence, but it is unlikely to accept a Levant shaped predominantly by a confident and activist Ankara. The Israeli strategic establishment has increasingly framed the expanding Turkish arc—stretching from the Levant through North Africa to the Gulf—in terms that echo encirclement. The Gaza war has made this relationship structurally antagonistic in ways that go beyond rhetoric. Turkey maintains a military presence in the occupied part of Cyprus, a base in Qatar, and a significant military footprint in Somalia and Libya. Its “Blue Homeland” doctrine projects maritime claims across the Eastern Mediterranean, complicating energy and connectivity projects that Israel views as strategic lifelines to Europe. Even absent direct hostility, geography alone generates friction. The competition is therefore structural, not rhetorical.
Beyond the Levant, the implications extend into Central Asia. For years, Ankara has cultivated cultural, linguistic, and institutional ties across the Turkic republics through the Organisation of Turkic States, educational networks, and defense-industrial cooperation. Azerbaijan is the linchpin of this architecture: Baku’s strategic position after the 2020 and 2023 Karabakh victories, its close alignment with Ankara, and its role as the key Caspian transit node mean that Turkish influence in Central Asia runs through Azerbaijani geography. The Zangezur corridor dispute—which Iran explicitly opposed, fearing a Turkish-Azerbaijani land bridge that would bypass its territory—is now stripped of one of its principal opponents. If sanctions and instability constrain Iran’s corridor function, Ankara’s cumulative investments in the Turkic space gain relative weight. The Middle Corridor linking Central Asia to Europe via the Caucasus and Turkey becomes more attractive as alternative continental and maritime routes face disruption. This is not a dramatic realignment but a gradual shift in comparative advantage.
The nuclear dimension adds further complexity and may prove the most consequential of all. The stated objective of the strikes was to degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Even if significant damage has been inflicted, the strategic outcome is heightened uncertainty. A program driven deeper underground or rebuilt under weakened inspection regimes increases opacity rather than reducing danger. For Turkey, nuclear asymmetry has long been a sensitive issue—particularly in relation to Israel’s undeclared but well-known capabilities. The Saudi dimension compounds this: Riyadh has stated explicitly that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, it will seek one too. The strikes may have disrupted the Iranian program; they have not resolved the proliferation logic driving the entire region. Turkey is unlikely to rush toward weaponization. But it may expand civilian nuclear capacity, deepen missile development, intensify collaboration with nuclear-armed Pakistan, and quietly cultivate technological options. The strikes reinforce the logic of hedging in Ankara. They may also, paradoxically, accelerate the very proliferation pressures they were intended to contain.
The Russia variable adds one further layer. The strikes fundamentally alter the Russia-Turkey-Iran triangle that governed Syrian diplomacy through the Astana process. Russia’s own weakened position after years of attrition in Ukraine, combined with Iran’s degradation, leaves Turkey as the sole functional broker in that diplomatic format. This represents a significant elevation of Ankara’s diplomatic weight that extends well beyond Syria.
Opportunity, however, is inseparable from risk. A weakened Iran could generate spillovers along Turkey’s eastern border: refugee flows, illicit networks, and militia fragmentation. Kurdish dynamics could sharpen across Iran, Iraq, and Syria in ways that create direct security challenges for Ankara. Sanctions enforcement may tighten, turning Turkey’s intermediary economic role into a liability with Western partners precisely when it needs their goodwill. Meanwhile, higher regional risk premia will strain an already fragile economy. Ankara, therefore, walks a narrow line. Its optimal scenario is not Iranian collapse but controlled degradation—sufficient to enhance Turkey’s strategic value without unleashing systemic instability. It must monetize indispensability without inheriting disorder.
A final and decisive variable is Washington’s own attitude. The Trump administration needs Turkey on multiple fronts simultaneously. This dependency limits how hard Washington can press Ankara to choose sides. Turkey’s strategic autonomy is therefore tolerated for the time being by the United States. That insight is the foundation of Erdoğan’s calculus.
In moments of upheaval, it is tempting to identify winners and losers. Israel and Turkey appear to gain from Iran’s weakening. Yet advantage in geopolitics is rarely absolute or durable. The February strikes have not crowned Turkey as regional hegemon. They have, however, clarified that Ankara will be central to the emerging order: in regional security architecture, in corridor politics linking Asia to Europe, in refugee management for Europe, in shaping Muslim public opinion, and increasingly as an indispensable interlocutor between Washington and a more unstable Middle East. Turkey’s leverage has increased. So too has its exposure. The margin for error is narrower than it appears.
