Ankara Ascendant: The Neo-Ottoman Revival

The map of the modern Middle East was largely codified by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which shaped the mandates and modern nations that occupy the geographic space today. Since the birth of this multitude of nation-states, almost all have rallied armies at one point or another against the perceived injustices codified by that agreement.

However, this clandestine document was a greater grievance to the state of Turkey than any other, for the lands that became these modern states were carved out of the Ottoman Empire with its blood as ink. Unlike the other regional powers, Turkey is unique in that it still holds a coherent imperial memory, and possesses a large industrial base, a growing population, and a centralized state. And while Iran had attempted to reinvigorate and modernize her ancient satrapy system through its proxies, the recent conflicts and tensions with Iran have greatly reduced her reach and influence in the immediate.

Yet Turkey has not forgotten and again is seeking to use this moment to to restore Ottoman influence, already reaching across the lands once held by her. Just as in her previous life, the Neo-Ottoman Empire looks both to the East and to the West.

In the Middle East, Ankara seeks to expand itself as a revisionist power leading the Arab street, acting as a major state sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood. Further East, Turkey broadcasts itself as leader of the Turkic world, and seeks to create a civilizational bloc project parallel to the Arab League and the European Union.

In the West, Turkey has gained a political foothold and leverage through its inclusion in NATO and holds the lifeline of the Balkan and Black Sea states through its chokehold over the Bosphorus.

This piece examines the architecture of Turkey’s modern imperial project.

 

Neo-Ottomanism and the Muslim Brotherhood

Under the leadership of Erdogan, Ankara has taken a great pivot away from the secularism of Ataturk’s legacy. Since Erdogan took power, Turkey has sought relevance in her former lands and over her former subjects throughout the Arab world. If Turkey can successfully sell itself as protector of the faith and legitimate sovereign of the Muslim world, it will gain influence throughout the entirety of the Arab world. Such a position would grant Ankara influence over the holy sites, centralize control over many trade routes, and transform her into the uncontested sovereign in the domain of the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean.

In this pursuit, she has found the Muslim Brotherhood to be a profoundly useful tool. The Brotherhood and its politics already share a network that spans the entirety of the Arab world and beyond it, even hosting chapters among immigrant communities in Europe and the Americas. The Brotherhood and its affiliate parties generally generate huge volumes of popular support, despite the governments of said Arab nations typically taking stances against them. This relationship, common throughout the Arab world, has created a widespread image throughout the Arab street that their leaders are illegitimate, do not pursue Islamic aims, and are ultimately tools of a colonial West. This perception creates a vacuum that Turkey seeks to fill.

 

Such opinions are popularly held regarding the Kingdoms of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the military junta of Egypt, and even the current regime of Syria. While Turkey provides haven for the leadership of this movement and its chapters, it doubly gains legitimacy throughout the Arab world and the many supporters of the Brotherhood. As state sponsor, Turkey gains through the Brotherhood ideological reach throughout the Sunni world, influence in the local politics of Arab states, and large grassroots mobilization.

Turkey’s Proxy Network – the Ottoman Periphery

As the conflict with Iran continues, it is important to detail how much Turkey has learned from its Persian counterparts. Iran found great use of proxies to grow its influence and extend its authority, but it almost always entrusted this responsibility to non-state actors. Turkey has learned from this past Iranian adventurism but has significantly raised the stakes. Turkey has invested in, and nurtured states as proxies. 

 

Beginning in the Libyan Civil War, Turkey quickly moved to ally itself with the internationally recognized governing body of Libya – the GNA, which was able to consolidate after the war and gain control throughout the country. Through Ankara’s intervention in Tripoli, she gained a government indebted to her, and the first foreign country to validate and recognize her new borders under the Mavi Vatan doctrine – an expansionist doctrine claiming vast Eastern Mediterranean zones. At Ankara’s request, an annual joint naval exercise occurs between Libya and Turkey asserting these new borders.

In Syria, Turkey expanded further, occupying the northern parts of the country. Through this act, Ankara not only gained a buffer against potential Kurdish rebels, but also a direct hand in the evolving Syrian Civil War. Through these newly occupied territories Ankara was able to begin drafting and training a force of Syrian mercenaries, who have since been sent abroad to Libya to gain experience. It is widely believed that Turkey, throughout the Syrian civil war, nurtured the now-president, then-Islamist rebel Ahmed al-Sharaa.

 

In Somalia, Turkey has constructed the largest overseas Turkish military base. From this point, it is Ankara that gives orders to Somali forces as well as providing for a vanguard of Turkish troops. Recently the African Union, which donated troops to Somalia to aid in the fight against Al-Shabab, has reported that it is being marginalized by the Turkish presence, which is increasingly being integrated into the state’s command structure.

Recently, Turkey hosted a joint military exercise in which Libyan and Syrian forces, sent by Ahmed al Sharaa, are receiving military training, equipment, and drilling under the instruction of Turkish officers.


The Turkic World – Turkey’s Civilizational Hinterland

 Beyond the immediate Middle East and Arab World, Turkey is seeking to consolidate itself as the natural hegemon and leader of the Turkish world. The Organization of Turkish States (OTS) was founded in 2009 includes the nations of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Largely, the organization aims to create an open market between its members, a Turkish market like that which exists in the European Union. The resources of such a bloc are vast as the Central Asian states are notorious for enormous amounts of mineral wealth. Just as the European Union market is largely dictated by the policies of France and Germany, on account of the size of their economies, development, and industrial capabilities, the same can be said of Turkey within the OTS. Turkey already possesses a significant and developed industrial sector, but possibly more important than that is that Turkey is the only member state with direct access to the sea and maritime trade.

 The consolidation of such a sphere would formalize and extend Ankara’s influence throughout the Turkic world, stretching from Anatolia to the Central Asian Steppe. Such a civilizational project has cultural implications, and as the organization further consolidates, it is likely to extend its influence outside of the borders of its member states and throughout the Turkish speaking world. Thus, the OTS has a potential to gain traction across a stretch of land from Turkey into Xinjiang.

 And with economic and cultural projects which the organization will naturally pursue, it can be expected that military dependencies will also develop between them. Already Turkey has maintained a supply of military equipment, particularly drones, to Azerbaijan in its last engagement with Armenia in 2020. The relationship between the two states is commonly referred to as ‘one nation’ with ‘two states’. Azerbaijan consistently paints itself in the light of ‘little brother’ to Turkey, and the only physical gap that exists between Turkey and the remainder of the Turkish world is a corridor through Armenia – whom Azerbaijan consistently rallies against and claims the entirety of Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan”. The acquisition of such a corridor into Azeri hands would physically connect the entirety of the Turkish world and funnel all of the material wealth, without obstruction, through Ankara.


Turkey in the West

 

Within Europe, Turkey holds a unique geopolitical position. She rules the waterways of the Black Sea, making Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and even Russia largely dependent on her good graces to allow maritime trade and access to global markets. Historically, this has made her presence in the Caucasus and the Balkans a natural extension of the interests of Istanbul and today Ankara, while also making her an eternal enemy of the Russian polity. During the Cold War, this reality saw the expansion of US bases being constructed in Turkey to further contain the Russian threat, which exist there to this day. Without her, NATO cannot function logistically in the Black Sea or Eastern Mediterranean without Turkish consent or cooperation. Ankara maintains this position to extract political concessions from Europe and the US.

Regarding the Black Sea, the Montreux Convention of 1936 effectively recognized Turkey as the sole authority over the thoroughfare between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Such an authority grants Ankara a natural political presence and weight in all the Black Sea states, as it is by Turkish authority which Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine can maintain maritime trade. Ukraine, which serves the world as a bread basket, is entirely dependent on Turkish graces to allow for her grain exports to reach the wider world.

 It is by the authority granted to it in the Montreux Convention that Ankara can restrict warship passage, regulate the tonnage of passing civilian ships, and close the straits entirely if it feels threatened by war. This geographic advantage grants Turkey a de facto veto power over Black Sea geopolitics. For the Black Sea states, the geography forces them to choose largely over time either alignment with Russia and confrontation with Turkey, or recognition of Turkey as the gatekeeper to their economies, and therefore a natural protector as well.

Additionally, Turkey boasts a large industrial sector. Particularly producing a growing variety of military equipment. Turkey, even prior to the Russian-Ukranian War, was already producing drones in masse, tanks, expanding its naval vessels and drydock capabilities, armored vehicles, missiles, and electronic warfare systems. With these weapons systems, Turkey is positioning herself to become a large arms supplier to Europe. The past century has largely seen a pacification of the European continent, who now, seeing the results of the Russian Ukrainian War has begun a general call to rearm. European capabilities to produce arms at scale have largely atrophied and will take time before they can produce domestically the necessary equipment for their rearmament goals. By contrast, Turkey’s production capabilities have not declined but only grown. She similarly shares Russia as a geopolitical rival, and already existing within the NATO framework, and understanding the internal bureaucracy of the organization, Turkey seeks to fill the gap.

 

Throughout the Balkans, Turkey already holds a degree of soft power. And a growing arms export industry to Europe along with its monopolized control over the Black Sea trade routes grants Turkey a soft protectorate over several Balkan states; Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Historical Ottoman ties coupled with modern economic dependence will create a new and modern vassal system, all but in name. And Turkey will begin to present itself as a protector of Balkan Muslims while also the guarantor of Black Sea security. In such a scenario, the Balkans again turn into Turkey’s western frontier, just as they were under Ottoman rule.

This dynamic will intensify as Europe confronts its own military decline. Within the next decade, Europe must prepare for confrontation with Russia as it faces the possibility that it cannot rearm fast enough. Germany’s military has become hollow, and France’s military industry is too small – where even Israel is a primary competitor. Eastern Europe will be forced to turn to Turkish suppliers for a multitude of weapon systems. Such an arrangement gives Turkey political leverage throughout NATO, where Western European powers might look the other way to Turkish interests regarding the Balkans, Black Sea States, and the Eastern European powers. While there is great strife within NATO between Turkey and some of its members regarding Greece and Cyprus, the original threat for which NATO was formed was Russia. And with that threat reemerging, Turkey is transforming from a simple NATO member to a kingmaker within the system.

Turkey, Israel, and Mavi Vatan

 

A quieter aspect of Turkish policy today is Mavi Vatan – the ‘Blue Homeland’. The goal of Mavi Vatan is to turn Turkey into the guarantor of Eastern Mediterranean traffic on par with her inherent authority over the Bosphorus. The policy, adopted by the Turkish government since its agreement with Libya in 2019, effectively seeks the erasure of the maritime borders of Greece and Cyprus for Turkey’s benefit. It redraws the maritime map to gain command of Eastern Mediterranean gas flow, encirclement of Cyprus, sea lanes to the Suez and direct access to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

Mavi Vatan explicitly means that Turkey is seeking to direct the Israel-Cyprus-Greece energy corridors, making the connection of Cyprus, Greece, and Israel through communications and energy infrastructure effectively impossible, and ensuring that Israel and Cyprus remain isolated ‘energy islands’. The policy seeks to block Israeli-Greek cooperation and Ankara’s 2019 deal with Libya cuts across Israel’s planned energy pipelines to connect Israel to the Hellenic bloc.

It is dually through the Mavi Vatan and Ankara’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood that Ankara is positioning itself as the true ‘protector of Jerusalem’, hosting Hamas leadership as well as supporting the rebuilding of Gaza, to ensure a foothold and leverage against Israel. Additionally, Turkey sought to place its own troops and multiply its influence within the Gaza Strip recently under the auspices of President Trump’s peace initiative.

And just as Iran sought out patronage of the Houthis and their control over the Bab el Mandeb strait and therefore rule over the Red Sea, Turkey has gained the same influence through its presence in Somalia and Sudan. Turkish forces in the Red Sea along with her cooperation with Libya in seeing the ratification of the Mavi Vatan framework threaten Israel’s maritime access to both Asia and Europe.

Israel’s existing relations in the Muslim world are noticeably strongest in the Turkish sphere, where while the state religion is Islam, there exists a noticeably high level of secularism. Israel maintains strong ties with Azerbaijan, as well as Kazakhstan. However, if the OTS moves to centralize in a manner like the European Union, Turkish influence within the organization might sever the existing relations. Notably, to date, Israel receives roughly 40% of its oil from Azerbaijan.

 

Ultimately, the two states are on a collision course. Israel seeks to maintain open sea lanes and energy independence while Turkey seeks the dominion of the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel’s relations with Cyprus and Greece will be forced to consolidate as they are likely to be tested, either politically or militarily, soon.

The Return of Empire

In conclusion, Turkey is the only Muslim power with a coherent imperial project. The proxies of Ankara stretch from Libya to Somalia, and from Syria to Azerbaijan, boasting influence over a large degree over the entirety of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus to Central Asia, and down through the Red Sea. Its NATO status, control of the Black Sea, domestic arms industry, and hosting of American military bases grant the Turks unprecedented leverage not yet seen in Istanbul since the time of the Sultans. Understanding Turkey is essential to understanding the next century, its dangers as well as its opportunities.