Two months after joint US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and eliminated much of Tehran’s senior leadership in late February, Ankara’s carefully calibrated response to the conflict has positioned Turkey to claim unprecedented regional influence in modern times — a shift that comes with substantial unresolved risks.
When the strikes first occurred, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan drew a clear line: he condemned the attack as a blatant violation of international law, shut Turkish airspace to US military forces, and extended official condolences following Khamenei’s assassination. Yet Erdogan’s administration simultaneously moved to distance itself from the fallen Iranian regime, openly criticizing Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf states and blaming Iranian hardline intransigence for the collapse of diplomatic talks that predated the war. This deliberate, balanced stance — what senior Turkish officials privately term “active neutrality,” signaling Ankara opposed the war but would not align with either belligerent bloc — has delivered compounding strategic dividends as a fragile Pakistani-brokered ceasefire has held since early April.
The most immediate and visible win for Turkey has been its new centrality in regional diplomacy. The four-nation de-escalation format convened in Islamabad on March 29, bringing together Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, operates in practice as a Turkey-led initiative. Well before the summit, Reuters reported on March 25 that Ankara had already served as a secret intermediary for backchannel communications between Iran and the US, testing Washington’s negotiating positions while warning Tehran against expanding the scope of the conflict. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen publicly backed Turkey’s mediation efforts as early as March 1, and the long-standing personal rapport between Erdogan and former US President Donald Trump has lent Ankara’s mediating role a credibility that smaller Gulf hubs like Doha or Muscat cannot match. While Turkish leaders do not expect to broker a full, permanent regional peace settlement, the role of mediator grants Ankara permanent “right of access” to all high-level negotiations that will shape the post-war Middle East order.
Beyond diplomatic clout, the conflict has triggered a deep structural shift in regional geopolitics that plays directly to Turkey’s advantage. For 40 years, Iran served as the core institutional anchor of the so-called “resistance axis” stretching across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the Gulf. After incremental Israeli dismantling of that network starting in 2023, the February decapitation strikes have left the axis completely eviscerated. Combined with Russia’s severely weakened global position following years of grinding attrition in Ukraine, the long-standing Russia-Turkey-Iran triangle that guided Syrian diplomacy through the Astana process has effectively collapsed. This leaves Turkey as the only functioning major power remaining in the format, a shift that has boosted Ankara’s diplomatic influence far beyond Syria’s borders.
These changes are already visible on the ground. After the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024, Turkish-aligned political and military actors hold the central role in Syria’s post-war negotiations, and Ankara’s quiet deconfliction channel with Israel is now the primary mechanism preventing direct armed clashes in Idlib and northeastern Syria. In Iraq, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has announced that Ankara will expand its regional focus beyond Syria to address control of the Qamishli–Sinjar corridor, where Iranian-backed militias have lost the political protection Tehran once provided. Critically, two major infrastructure and trade projects long held up by regional tensions are now newly viable: the $17 billion Development Road project through Iraq, which will connect Turkey and Europe directly to the Persian Gulf, and the Zangezur Corridor through the South Caucasus, which links Turkey to Central Asia while completely bypassing Iranian territory. Once completed, these corridors will redirect a significant share of global East-West trade through Turkish-controlled territory, representing a generational geopolitical realignment rather than a short-term tactical gain.
The Iran war has also accelerated a shift in Gulf security planning that began years before the February strikes, opening new defense and economic opportunities for Ankara. After years of watching Iranian missiles strike civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar despite long-standing US security guarantees, Gulf monarchies have increasingly moved away from exclusive reliance on Washington and are diversifying their regional security partnerships. Turkey is the most natural alternative: over the past decade, Ankara has evolved from a major arms importer to a self-sufficient global defense exporter, with 80% of its military equipment produced domestically by 2026. Key Turkish defense exports include the widely popular Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles, the new KAAN fifth-generation fighter jet, and a growing fleet of advanced naval vessels built under the domestic MILGEM program. Multiple confidential defense agreements signed throughout March indicate Ankara is already converting Gulf security anxiety into long-term contracts and deep embedded political partnerships. This momentum is set to grow when Turkey hosts the July NATO summit, where Erdogan will arrive with far more leverage than he held in January: as the alliance’s most strategically exposed frontline state, an indispensable regional mediator, and a credible candidate for reintegration into Western defense-industrial frameworks from which Washington previously sought to exclude him.
For all these structural gains, Turkey’s rising influence carries significant tactical and long-term risks that threaten to undo Ankara’s progress. In the immediate aftermath of the US-Israeli strikes, for example, the Borsa Istanbul stock exchange plummeted 7% on March 2 as global investors reacted to the conflict, and spiking energy costs have worsened Turkey’s already severe domestic inflation. Historically, Iran has supplied roughly 14% of Turkey’s total natural gas imports, and war-related disruptions to this supply have directly translated to rising domestic energy prices for Turkish consumers. By mid-March, NATO air defenses had already intercepted three Iranian missiles reportedly targeting Turkish territory, a stark reminder that Turkey’s geographic proximity to the conflict cannot be mitigated by diplomacy alone.
The most dangerous threat, however, lies in emerging shifts around Kurdish autonomy. Recent reports indicate Washington is exploring new partnerships with Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, particularly the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — a development that strikes at the core of Turkey’s most sensitive national security concerns. In Ankara’s view, the establishment of a Kurdish autonomous zone in western Iran would complete a continuous arc of Kurdish self-governance stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Zagros Mountains, a development no Turkish government can accept. It would also likely collapse the fragile domestic peace process with the PKK, which had begun moving toward disarmament in 2025.
The growing rivalry with Israel compounds these risks. In comments made in February 2026, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett labeled Turkey “the new Iran” and warned of an emerging Turkish threat to Israeli regional security. While this framing has not become official Israeli government policy, it is no longer limited to fringe political rhetoric. With Iran reduced to a weakened state, regional observers increasingly view the next great Middle Eastern power rivalry as one between Ankara and Jerusalem.
In sum, Turkey’s gains from the post-Iran war order are provisional. Ankara is unambiguously more powerful today than it was on February 27, the day before the strikes, but its new position depends entirely on outcomes outside of Turkish control: that Iran remains weakened but not fully fragmented, that Kurdish regional ambitions remain contained, and that the post-war order rewards neutral mediators rather than belligerent powers. Erdogan’s immediate priority between now and the July NATO summit is to lock in Turkey’s structural advantages — including new Gulf defense ties, control of key trade corridors through Iraq and the Caucasus, and permanent mediation status amid the power vacuum in Tehran — before uncontrollable geopolitical shifts undermine his gains. For the moment, though, a striking paradox remains: the country that most openly opposed the war, refused to join the fighting, and worked to prevent the conflict is the power that has clearly emerged stronger from its aftermath.