Turkey in the face of the war in Iran: a key actor that could change the equation

“We are not a country that is easily provoked. Thank God, we have no difficulty in defending our own security. But we also know very well what it means to give in to provocation and to be drawn into a war.” It was in these terms that the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hakan Fidan, expressed Ankara’s position on 7 March 2026 regarding the war in the Middle East, which has disrupted the already fragile balances across the region. This position was reiterated on 10 March by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during a telephone call with his Iranian counterpart Massoud Pezeshkian. During the conversation, the Turkish President stressed that Turkey was negatively affected by conflicts to which it is not a party and that violations of its airspace could not be tolerated.

For nearly two weeks, since the outbreak of the war opposing the United States and Israel to Iran, Turkey has been observing this conflict from a delicate position: geographically close, politically and economically concerned, but militarily outside the operation. Since 28 February, the Turkish authorities have repeatedly called for restraint, while closely monitoring the collateral effects of the conflict throughout the region.

A recent incident illustrates this tension. An Iranian missile was intercepted on 9 March after entering Turkish airspace. Ankara states that it immediately contacted the Iranian authorities to clarify the incident. The Iranians indicated that Turkey was in no way being targeted, and Turkish officials appeared to accept the possibility of a trajectory error. The message conveyed by Ankara is clear: Turkey does not wish to be drawn into this war, but it will not tolerate any infringement of its sovereignty.

This strategic caution reflects Ankara’s traditional position in regional crises involving Iran: to avoid direct escalation while preserving its capacity to respond. In this conflict, already fraught with risks of expansion, Turkey is nevertheless a key actor whose involvement could profoundly alter the course of events.

Diplomatic tightrope walking

For centuries, Turkey has maintained a relationship with Iran characterised by both rivalry and cooperation. The two countries share a 550-kilometre land border, and although the claim that this border has not changed since the Treaty of Qasr-i Shirin (1639) is more a matter of legend, carefully maintained by both sides, it is true that there has been no war between them since 1823. Today, with a trade volume of around 6 billion dollars per year, Turkey and Iran share significant economic interests, particularly in the energy and commercial sectors. Iran supplies 13% of the natural gas consumed by Turkey, while the latter is a major tourist destination for Iranians, with 3.5 million visitors in 2025, who do not require a visa to cross the border. A railway link between Van and Tehran had even been reactivated in March 2025 in order to support these tourist flows, but has been suspended in the current context. On the geopolitical level, despite their disagreements on several regional issues in recent years, in Syria or in the Caucasus, Ankara and Tehran have consistently sought to avoid direct confrontation.

The expansion of the current conflict nevertheless forces Turkey into genuine diplomatic tightrope walking. On the one hand, relations between Turkey and Israel, which have significantly deteriorated since the beginning of the war in Gaza, make any alignment by Ankara with the ongoing operation politically impossible. On the other hand, Turkey maintains a very close strategic partnership with Azerbaijan, a country that has drawn considerably closer to Israel in recent years, and which has itself been struck by Iran. Baku has raised its tone by invoking its right to self-defence and is counting on Turkey’s support. The effects of the conflict are also beginning to be felt in the Eastern Mediterranean: Cyprus, which hosts two British sovereign military bases, has been hit by strikes, and Ankara has decided to reinforce its military presence in the Turkish part of the island by deploying, in particular, six F-16 aircraft, while the European Union (EU) has shown solidarity with the Cypriot government by deploying naval forces. In Ankara, Emmanuel Macron’s visit on 9 March was also closely observed, amid concerns that the current crisis might be used as a pretext to alter the military balance in the region.

Turkey is also concerned about the potential consequences of a protracted conflict and the destabilising effects of a lasting deterioration in Iran’s internal situation. From a humanitarian and migratory perspective, Ankara fears in particular the emergence of new flows of refugees and migrants transiting through or originating from Iran, adding to the already existing migratory pressures in the region. From a security standpoint, a weakening of Iranian state structures could also create conditions favourable to the resurgence or reconfiguration of terrorist networks and non-state armed groups, notably Kurdish ones, likely to exploit the disorder. Furthermore, the Turkish authorities fear that a prolonged weakening of the Iranian state’s control capacities could facilitate the expansion of illicit routes, particularly those linked to drug trafficking from Afghanistan. Indeed, a profound destabilisation of Iran would not merely constitute an internal problem for the country, but a major disruptive factor for regional security as a whole, with cascading effects.

The NATO factor

Finally, an additional factor is that Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and hosts military bases of the Atlantic Alliance, notably Incirlik, near the Syrian border, which houses American nuclear weapons. The Turkish army is the second largest in NATO in terms of personnel, supported by an increasingly robust defence industry, and there is no doubt that if Iran were to directly target Turkey, Ankara possesses the military means to respond forcefully. Above all, as a NATO member, it could invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty in order to trigger the mechanisms of collective defence.

Such a development would have the immediate effect of shifting this conflict into an entirely different strategic dimension, transforming it into a crisis liable to involve directly all 32 NATO member states. In such a scenario, the logic of escalation would go beyond the regional framework and enter into a completely different dynamic. In other words, Turkey’s position in the face of the war in Iran does not stem solely from a Middle Eastern policy calculation or a diplomatic positioning vis-à-vis regional actors: it is embedded in the Euro-Atlantic security architecture. Turkey’s posture thus appears as a parameter capable of transforming a regional crisis into a test for the entire Alliance.

For the time being, even though Ankara is striving to remain outside this war and rather to play a role of de-escalation and mediation, a possible decision by Turkey to enter it, whether voluntarily or through escalation, would constitute the real strategic turning point of this crisis.