Israel said Syria was preparing to allow Turkish forces to deploy at Abu al-Duhur, an airbase southwest of Aleppo and not far from the Turkish border. Türkiye and Syria denied that a permanent Turkish base was planned. But Israeli aircraft struck the site before the dispute could be settled. Türkiye received no advance warning. U.S. envoy Tom Barrack later said Ankara could reasonably have treated the incoming aircraft as a threat and prepared a military response.

No Turkish-Israeli battle followed. This time.

The episode was more than another contested airstrike in Syria. It exposed a strategic change that Washington has been slow to absorb. The old regional order—organized around Iran’s proxy network, Israel’s military dominance, America’s security umbrella and Türkiye’s uneasy place inside the Western camp—is giving way to something less stable. Iran has been weakened. Syria has a new government. Israel is projecting power beyond its borders. Arab governments are building new defenses. And Türkiye, with NATO’s second-largest army, a growing arms industry and influence from the Black Sea to the Gulf, is no longer content to operate as somebody else’s junior partner.

Some voices in Washington have begun asking whether President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Türkiye is becoming “the next Iran”—an anti-Western power encircling Israel and exploiting the vacuum left by Tehran. A recent Foundation for Defense of Democracies podcast made that case in especially stark terms.

It is a provocative question. It is also the wrong one.

Türkiye is not replacing Iran’s revolutionary system with a Turkish version. It is pursuing a more nationalist, transactional and independent strategy: sometimes aligned with Washington, sometimes obstructive, and increasingly backed by military capability. The distinction matters. If the United States misdiagnoses strategic autonomy as permanent hostility, it may turn a difficult ally into the adversary it fears. If Ankara mistakes its leverage for immunity, it may discover that autonomy without trust becomes isolation.

The American interest is therefore neither a blank check for Erdoğan nor a campaign to expel Türkiye from the West. It is a disciplined effort to keep Türkiye anchored in the transatlantic system—while attaching consequences to policies that endanger that system.

The power rising in Iran’s shadow

For decades, Iran expanded its influence through a revolutionary model: armed nonstate partners, sectarian networks, covert financing and a nuclear program that placed it in direct confrontation with the United States. Türkiye’s method is different. Ankara works primarily through state agreements, conventional forces, military training, trade, diplomacy and defense exports. It can be coercive and destabilizing. It is not the same architecture.

The clearest evidence of Türkiye’s new ambition came in August, when Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement. The pact treats an attack on one country as an attack on all three. Its members are now creating political and military coordination mechanisms, planning exercises and discussing cooperation in air defense, unmanned systems, electronic warfare and artificial intelligence.

The agreement should not be exaggerated into a fully operational Muslim NATO. Its commitments remain largely untested; Pakistan said this week that no military response had been discussed after Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. But it is a serious geopolitical development. It combines Saudi capital, Pakistani nuclear deterrence and manpower, and Turkish military technology and operational experience. It also shows three long-standing American partners preparing for a region in which U.S. protection may be less predictable.

That is not necessarily anti-American. It is partly a response to uncertainty about America.

Türkiye’s position in post-Assad Syria provides another measure of its reach. Ankara supports the new government in Damascus, has agreed to train and advise Syrian forces, and wants a unified Syrian state rather than an autonomous Kurdish-led armed zone along its border. Türkiye sees the Syrian Democratic Forces’ principal Kurdish component as linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which both Washington and Ankara designate as a terrorist organization. The United States, however, relied on the S.D.F. against the Islamic State. Each side believes the other has discounted a fundamental security concern.

Türkiye has also learned to turn diplomatic access into influence. Its political contact with Hamas is deeply troubling, particularly where it provides space for financial or logistical networks. Yet that same access has at times allowed Ankara to press Hamas toward negotiations, including during Gaza cease-fire diplomacy. Contact is not virtue, but neither is it meaningless. The hard question is whether Türkiye uses access to moderate armed groups or allows those relationships to normalize and empower them.

This is the profile of an assertive middle power, not an Iranian successor: allied but not obedient, ambitious but not revolutionary, opportunistic yet still tied economically and militarily to the West.

History explains the contradiction

The Turkish Republic has always contained a tension between Western alignment and strategic independence.

Founded in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the republic turned toward secular institutions and Europe while guarding its sovereignty with unusual intensity. Türkiye recognized Israel in 1949—the first Muslim-majority country to do so—and sent troops to Korea under United Nations command. It joined NATO in 1952, bringing the alliance control of the straits connecting the Black Sea and Mediterranean and a long frontier with the Soviet Union.

During the Cold War, the partnership was vital but never easy. It survived disputes over Cyprus, military coups and an American arms embargo. Türkiye and Israel later developed close military ties in the 1990s. The relationship changed after Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002. Ankara pursued greater influence in the Muslim world, objected to the Iraq war, clashed with Israel over the Palestinians and concluded that Western allies often expected Turkish cooperation without respecting Turkish interests.

The Syrian war widened the break. Washington armed and trained the S.D.F.; Ankara saw an American-protected extension of the PKK taking shape on its border. Türkiye, meanwhile, supported Syrian opposition groups whose ideology and conduct caused deep concern in the United States. Both governments told themselves that the other was ignoring the larger danger.

Then came the Russian S-400 air-defense system. Türkiye’s purchase was not an ordinary procurement dispute. Washington concluded that operating the Russian system alongside advanced NATO aircraft could expose sensitive information. It removed Türkiye from the F-35 fighter program and imposed sanctions. Talks about a possible Turkish return have continued, but U.S. law remains an obstacle while Ankara possesses or operates the S-400.

And yet Türkiye did not become Russia’s ally. It condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity, supplied military equipment to Kyiv and invoked the Montreux Convention to restrict warship passage into the Black Sea. With the United Nations, it helped broker the Black Sea grain agreement. At the same time, it expanded commerce with Moscow and refused to join Western sanctions.

To American policymakers trained to sort countries into allies and enemies, this behavior can look incoherent. From Ankara, it looks like sovereignty: cooperate where interests overlap, bargain where they do not, and preserve room to maneuver among larger powers.

That strategy has produced genuine gains. It has also steadily depleted the trust on which alliances depend.

Why the Iran analogy fails

Analogies can illuminate. They can also become shortcuts around evidence.

Iran’s regional project has been explicitly revolutionary and opposed to the American-led order. Its most important instruments have included militias and armed movements designed to operate below the threshold of conventional war. Türkiye remains embedded in NATO’s command, exercises and planning. In 2026, Turkish forces played a prominent role in Steadfast Dart, NATO’s largest exercise of the year; Türkiye assumed responsibility for the exercise’s combined air component.

Iran has pursued a nuclear program that has generated decades of inspections, sanctions and proliferation fears. There is no public evidence that Türkiye is building a nuclear weapon. Iran’s political competition is restricted by clerical institutions. Türkiye’s elections are badly distorted, but the opposition can still win: in the 2024 local elections, the Republican People’s Party finished first nationwide and retained both Istanbul and Ankara, handing Erdoğan’s party its worst electoral setback in more than two decades.

Türkiye is also bound to the United States by roughly $49 billion in annual trade in goods and services, defense relationships and millions of human ties. None of these connections guarantees friendly policy. They do give both countries interests worth protecting and leverage worth using.

Most important, calling Türkiye the next Iran mistakes a possible outcome for a present fact. A state repeatedly treated as irredeemably hostile may eventually decide it has little left to gain from restraint. Strategic estrangement can become self-fulfilling.

That does not mean Washington should dismiss every warning about Ankara. It means serious claims require serious proof. Allegations that the Turkish state supports Hezbollah, al-Qaeda or the Islamic State cannot rest on insinuation or repetition. Evidence of a Turkish individual, company or permissive jurisdiction is not automatically proof of a state policy. Congress should demand declassified findings, financial records or formal intelligence judgments before building policy around such accusations.

The same evidentiary standard should apply in the other direction. Ankara cannot label every Syrian Kurdish political actor a terrorist without demonstrating organizational and operational connections. Nor can Turkish officials answer criticism by attributing it to anti-Turkish prejudice. Evidence is not a favor to one side; it is the foundation of legitimate policy.

Ankara’s critics are not imagining everything

A persuasive defense of the U.S.-Türkiye relationship must begin by acknowledging why it has become so difficult.

The S-400 purchase endangered defense interoperability and handed Moscow a political victory inside NATO. Ankara’s relationship with Hamas has gone beyond occasional mediation. Erdoğan has hosted its leaders and rejects the American and European designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. The U.S. Treasury has identified Hamas-linked financiers and commercial assets operating in Türkiye. Those networks should be closed, transparently and verifiably.

More recently, the United States sanctioned a Turkish investment bank and related entities over alleged transactions benefiting Iran. The bank denied wrongdoing. The allegations should be adjudicated on evidence, not nationality. But Türkiye cannot demand trust while allowing its financial system to become a route around sanctions imposed by its principal allies.

The gravest damage may be internal. The detention and imprisonment of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most formidable rival, triggered mass protests and international criticism. İmamoğlu denies the charges; the government says the judiciary is independent. But the accumulation of cases against opposition politicians, journalists and civil society has made that assurance increasingly difficult to accept.

Democratic decline is not merely a domestic Turkish issue. It changes foreign policy. Leaders who face weak institutional restraints can take greater risks, personalize disputes and use external enemies to mobilize supporters. An alliance with a country is more durable when it rests on institutions and public consent rather than a relationship between presidents.

Ankara’s rhetoric toward Israel has also been incendiary and sometimes dehumanizing. Israel’s conduct in Gaza and Syria can and should be challenged under international law. That criticism loses moral authority when it slides into collective blame or language that frightens Jewish communities. Turkish officials should draw a bright line between opposing an Israeli government and demonizing Israelis or Jews.

The same standard applies in the United States. Disagreement with Erdoğan is not a license to portray Turks or Muslims as a civilizational threat. Turkish Americans should not be treated as proxies for a foreign government any more than Jewish Americans should be held responsible for decisions made in Jerusalem.

Syria is where miscalculation could become war

The most immediate risk is not an ideological Turkish campaign against the West. It is an accidental or limited conflict between Türkiye and Israel in Syrian airspace.

Israel fears that Turkish radar, aircraft or air defenses in Syria could restrict its freedom to strike weapons transfers and hostile forces. Türkiye sees Israeli attacks and territorial incursions as threats to Syrian sovereignty and to the government Ankara is helping stabilize. Syria wants military capacity after years of civil war but does not want its territory to become the arena for a stronger neighbor’s confrontation.

All three positions contain a legitimate concern—and an invitation to escalation.

Israel’s security fears do not grant an unlimited right to strike any facility it suspects may someday host Turkish forces. Türkiye’s invitation from Damascus would not make every deployment prudent. Syrian consent cannot eliminate Israel’s fear of advanced systems near its border. But security cannot be built through preventive attacks on every feared capability; eventually, that doctrine produces the war it is meant to prevent.

The broader record also matters. Since Assad’s fall, Israel has conducted extensive strikes and established positions inside Syrian territory. A United Nations commission reported this month that some Israeli actions, including detentions and transfers of Syrian civilians, may amount to war crimes. Israel rejected the report as biased and described its presence as temporary and defensive.

Washington should not choose between Turkish and Israeli narratives. It should prevent their militaries from testing those narratives against one another. A standing deconfliction system must include advance notification, protected communication lines, agreed geographic procedures and an emergency channel connecting senior commanders. The mechanism should reduce the risk of collision without granting any country a veto over Syria.

The policy Washington needs

For years, American policy has alternated between accommodation and punishment. Neither has restored trust.

The United States needs conditional engagement: cooperation attached to specific, verifiable steps.

First, Washington and Ankara should negotiate a technically credible resolution of the S-400 dispute. The objective should be to ensure that the system cannot collect NATO data or operate in a way that threatens allied aircraft. If Türkiye meets clear legal and technical conditions, Congress should define a staged path back to advanced defense cooperation. Permanent exclusion gives Ankara little incentive to compromise and encourages deeper reliance on non-Western suppliers.

Second, the countries need a written counterterrorism bargain. Türkiye should shut Hamas financial and logistical networks and increase transparency in sanctions enforcement. The United States should take Turkish evidence about PKK-linked activity seriously, clarify the limits and duration of its relationship with the S.D.F., and make civilian protection a condition of all operations. Equal standards do not require identical policies; they require that both allies’ civilian security concerns count.

Third, the administration should welcome regional burden-sharing while testing its purposes. The Mecca pact could contribute to air defense, maritime security and deterrence. It could also harden rival blocs or draw members into conflicts they cannot control. Washington should seek structured consultation with the pact’s members instead of reflexively treating the agreement as either an American instrument or an anti-American challenge.

Fourth, democracy must return to the center of the alliance. This does not mean Washington selecting Türkiye’s leaders or pursuing regime change. It means consistently defending due process, independent courts, free media and genuinely competitive elections. A democratic Türkiye would be a more predictable ally and a more persuasive regional leader.

Finally, the United States must keep criticism proportional. Sanctions tied to specific conduct are defensible. Treating Türkiye itself as a permanent sanctions target is strategically reckless. Congress should preserve educational exchange, municipal partnerships, business ties, scientific cooperation and dialogue among civil societies even during government disputes.

What this means for Turkish Americans

Turkish-American advocacy is most effective when it is factual, democratic and directed toward achievable American policy. AI-generated editorial illustration for TC-USAPAC.

For Turkish Americans, this debate is not remote. The image of Türkiye formed in Washington affects arms policy, sanctions, commerce, academic exchange and how Americans of Turkish heritage are perceived in their own country.

But the community will not build credibility by acting as an overseas communications office for Ankara. Turkish Americans do not need to defend every Erdoğan policy to defend the value of the alliance. In fact, honest criticism makes advocacy stronger. A community that speaks for democratic rights in Türkiye, condemns illicit financing and rejects antisemitism is better positioned to challenge unsupported claims, anti-Turkish prejudice and policies that push the two countries apart.

Turkish-American advocacy should be American in method: constitutional, evidence-based, bipartisan and open to coalition.

Six priorities for advocacy

1. Make deconfliction an urgent congressional issue. Ask the administration to establish a permanent Türkiye-Israel-Syria military communication mechanism. A hotline is cheaper than a war and more realistic than demanding political reconciliation first.

2. Support a conditional S-400–F-35 roadmap. Advocate for verifiable technical benchmarks, congressional oversight and reciprocal steps. The objective is not a favor for Ankara; it is to restore NATO interoperability and reduce Russian influence.

3. Demand one standard for terrorism and illicit finance. Türkiye must close Hamas-linked networks. Washington must take the PKK threat and Turkish civilian security seriously. Claims against either side should be supported with evidence that can withstand scrutiny.

4. Defend Turkish democracy without becoming partisan. Support due process for İmamoğlu and every defendant, judicial independence, press freedom and fair elections. Do not confuse support for Türkiye with support for its government of the day.

5. Correct the record without denying the record. When public figures call Türkiye “the next Iran,” answer with facts about NATO, Ukraine, trade and competitive elections. Then acknowledge the S-400, democratic backsliding and Hamas. Credibility comes from telling the whole story.

6. Build difficult coalitions. Work with Jewish, Greek, Armenian, Kurdish, Arab and other American organizations around principles that do not require agreement on every historical dispute: civilian protection, opposition to hate, reliable evidence, democratic government and prevention of war.

A message Turkish Americans can take to Congress

Türkiye is neither an obedient client nor a new Iran. It is a consequential NATO ally whose cooperation affects the Black Sea, Syria, counterterrorism, energy routes and regional deterrence. Congress should confront harmful Turkish policies with evidence and enforceable conditions while preserving the institutions that keep Türkiye anchored in the West. We urge a permanent Türkiye-Israel-Syria deconfliction mechanism, a verifiable roadmap for resolving the S-400 dispute, consistent counterterrorism enforcement, support for democratic rights and greater investment in U.S.-Türkiye civic and commercial ties.

An alliance is a choice, not a description

Türkiye’s rise will create friction regardless of who governs in Ankara. The country is too large, too capable and too conscious of its history to return to the role of compliant flank state. Washington should stop expecting obedience. Ankara should stop interpreting every limit as disrespect.

The deeper choice is whether Turkish power develops inside a negotiated Western framework or against it.

The “next Iran” label offers emotional clarity at the price of strategic thought. It collapses different histories, political systems and methods of power into a single enemy image. Worse, it encourages both sides to prepare for an estrangement they still have the ability to prevent.

Türkiye must decide whether autonomy means responsible leadership or permanent confrontation. The United States must decide whether an alliance can accommodate disagreement without abandoning standards. Turkish Americans can help insist on both answers at once.

Türkiye is not America’s next Iran. But it could become America’s next great strategic failure if Washington confuses difficulty with enmity—and if Ankara confuses importance with impunity.