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By Juliette Oliver
Over the last two decades, Turkey has seized the opportunity for low-cost military dominance through the development of its indigenous drone and weapons programs. Turkey has risen to drone superstardom, utilizing its defense industry proactively as a hard power abroad in a quest to strengthen its place and position during global turmoil. Turkey seeks to limit reliance on Western partners and increase national independence through technological sovereignty. The rhetoric framing Ankara's exports, however, differs dramatically from conflict to conflict, such as in Russia’s war in Ukraine and in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Such shifts demonstrate an increasingly flexible, albeit complicated, drone diplomacy. Turkey uses private military companies and their drone exports to align or distance itself with buyer-states, heightening complexity around how to hold it accountable for its role in international conflicts.
BACKGROUND:
Ankara’s inaugural test flight of the infamous Bayraktar TB2 in 2014, proved a revolutionary turning point in Turkey’s impressive indigenous military development. Since then, Turkish Armed Forces have accelerated production and pushed the bar of UAV manufacturing and supply self-sufficiency. In 2023, Turkey produced almost 80% of its own military parts and weaponry. These arms initiatives are instruments for strengthening national security, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan underscored at a ceremony in Ankara on February 24, 2026 for Turkey’s newest addition to the autonomous weapons family, the Sancar unmanned naval vehicle.
Conflicts such as the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have become battlegrounds for drones, as well as testing sites for Erdoğan's new hard power diplomacy. Turkey has shifted its rhetoric across these conflicts, framing drone exports from purely arms trade to intense cooperation with allies. Ankara demonstrates the flexibility that drone diplomacy provides and the effort Erdoğan is willing to put in to reap maximum benefits from its engagement.
The 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War illustrates Turkey’s most direct application of drone-enabled power. At the outset of hostilities, Erdoğan declared “It’s time to pay,” backing Azerbaijan’s demands that Armenia withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh. After Azerbaijan's successful efforts to retake the territory, Erdoğan later attempted to align himself closely with the victory, claiming, “Together with our Azerbaijani brothers, we completely eliminated the enemy forces.”
While at first praising Turkish military support, an article in Azerbaijan’s official newspaper expressed frustration at perceived Turkish exploitation of its victory, commenting, “Our people, army, and commander view with disappointment and deep sorrow the attempts to claim and take ownership of our rightful victory. Azerbaijan’s victory is for the entire Turkic world, but Türkiye is not its architect.” Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrates how Turkey uses drone exports to both shape battlefield outcomes and construct narratives of military competence and regional leadership, notwithstanding tension with allies who resent its exploitative efforts.
In stark contrast, Turkey’s approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reflects a more cautious and flexible strategy. Unlike most NATO members, Turkey did not impose comprehensive sanctions on Russia. It instead maintains a position of cooperative rivalry. Within this framework, Turkey has sought to position itself as a mediator while continuing defense exports to Ukraine. Turkish officials have emphasized the private, rather than governmental, nature of drone sales. Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kıran stated, “Kyiv purchased the drones from Baykar, a private Turkish defense company,” while then Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu asserted, “If a country buys [weapons] from us, they are no longer Turkish.” These statements aim to create distance between the state and the consequences of drone deployment despite Turkey having serious stakes in Ukraine’s successful defense against Russian aggression. Russia has rejected this framing, and the then-Russian Ambassador Alexey Yerkhov responded that “Explanations like ‘business is business’ will not work, since your drones are killing our soldiers.”
This exchange underscores the limits of plausible deniability when private firms are closely linked to national strategy and foreign policy. Although Ankara frames drone exports as private transactions, the relationship between state and industry in Turkey is deeply intertwined. Defense firms operate within a system shaped by government contracts, which are incentivized and only given to Erdoğan loyalists and those politically aligned with his regime. The prominence of Baykar, producer of the Bayraktar TB2, exemplifies this dynamic, as one of the most prolific defense companies is run by Erdoğan’s son-in-law, Selçuk Bayraktar.
This structure allows Ankara to project influence indirectly. Channeling military exports through nominally private firms enables Ankara to expand its strategic reach while limiting formal accountability. In practice, these companies function as extensions of state policy, advancing both domestic and foreign objectives.
IMPLICATIONS:
Turkey’s rise as a drone power reflects a broader transformation in its strategic identity. Moving beyond dependence on Western suppliers, it has leveraged indigenous defense development to expand its autonomy and influence. Turkey’s hybrid drone diplomacy allows it to openly align with partners, such as with Azerbaijan in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, or maintain distance, as it has done in the case of Ukraine. Across both contexts, drones enable a form of indirect power projection that blends military effectiveness with strategic narrative-building.
Other countries have already taken notice, and have either condemned the spread of Turkish drones to their neighborhood or embraced the opportunity to bolster their respective capabilities. In February 2026, the Turkish arms supplier Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKE) signed a major export agreement with the Egyptian Ministry of Defense for $350 million, which includes the sale of ammunition and joint procurement of drones. Israel was quick to denounce such agreements, believing these developments signal efforts not only to seek reconciliation with former regional rivals, but to create a coordinated political and strategic bloc described as a “Sunni ring” militarily surrounding Israel. The extensive efforts that Turkey is making to compartmentalize its private military and public governmental sphere provide it with a back door and leave other countries struggling with how to respond. Israel for instance has opted for a strategy of challenging Turkey’s trade in the region with its own and through containment.
These occurrences will only increase as Turkey pushes full steam ahead to capitalize on its drone diplomacy as a means for normalization with other countries. It will become increasingly more difficult to hold Turkey accountable for its arms exports as these systems and relationships expand. Turkey's evolving and increasingly active posture in regional military affairs motivates countries in the West, including the United States, to develop their military industries and compete on the global stage. Recognizing that the future of domestic securitization will progressively be ensured by autonomous weaponry, the U.S. will be forced to compete with -- rather than solely confront -- Turkey, which in the past was the initial reason for development of autonomous weapons.
CONCLUSION:
Turkey’s drone diplomacy reveals not just a shift in military capability, but a recalibration of how power is projected while diffusing accountability. By leveraging nominally private defense firms to advance strategic objectives, Ankara has constructed a flexible model of influence that adapts across conflicts while complicating international responses.
Turkey’s approach offers a template for indirect, deniable power projection in contemporary warfare. This in turn incites other countries to refine their own diplomatic framework in parallel with the foreign drone market in order to keep pace with and adapt to the contemporary era of drone diplomacy.
AUTHOR'S BIO:
Juliette Oliver is a researcher with the American Foreign Policy Council and is pursuing her master’s degree in Eurasian studies.
By Halil Karaveli
Provided that he succeeds in maintaining Turkish neutrality and in shielding Turkey from the fallout of the Iran war, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s standing with the Turkish public will presumably be bolstered. But Erdoğan nonetheless faces difficult challenges and dilemmas ahead, as his personal power ambitions and national security imperatives ultimately cannot be reconciled. Having to contend with Israel’s regional domination and expansionism, Turkey is compelled to accommodate Kurdish aspirations, something that Erdoğan has so far been extremely reluctant to do. While Erdoğan’s foreign policy leadership may appear well suited for the perilous moment, his authoritarian rule isn’t.
BACKGROUND:
Speaking on March 14, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that Turkey’s “primary objective” is to stay outside of the war in the Middle East. Fidan ruled out a military response at this stage in response to three Iranian missiles that were intercepted over Turkey by NATO defenses. Fidan said that available data shows that the missiles were fired from Iran, which Iranian officials have denied. “I know that we are being provoked and we will be provoked, but this is our objective,” he said. “We want to stay out of this war,” he emphasized.
In his statement on February 28, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran, assassinating its Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, members of his family and a score of government figures, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for the return to diplomacy and a ceasefire to prevent the region from being dragged into a wider conflict. “We are deeply saddened and concerned by the U.S.-Israeli attack against Iran,” Erdoğan stated, eschewing outright condemnation. Claiming that the attack on Iran was the “result of Netanyahu’s provocations,” Erdoğan tacitly exonerated the U.S., singling out Israel as the main culprit. He also said that Turkey likewise finds Iran’s missile and drone attacks against the Gulf countries “unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances.”
Turkey and Iran are bound together by culture and ethnicity – Ali Khamenei was part Turkish, reciting poetry in Turkish, as is Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian – but separated by geopolitics. Since Antiquity, the powers that have controlled the Anatolian and Iranian plateaus – Greeks and Persians, Byzantines and Sasanids, Ottomans and Safavids -- have been locked in fierce rivalry over the control of trade routes and buffer zones from Mesopotamia to Caucasus. It’s no coincidence that Turkey and Iran have been on opposite sides in Syria and that Iran has supported Armenia against Azerbaijan. Geopolitics has trumped ethnicity and religion: the Ottoman and Safavid empires were both founded by Turkish tribes.
In their bid to challenge the Ottomans as the leading Islamic power and seeking to wrest Anatolia from it, the Safavids forcefully converted Sunni majority Persia to Shiite Islam – an unprecedented act in Islamic history -- which in turn prompted a turn to Sunni orthodoxy by the Ottomans. Yet while a weakened -- not destroyed -- Iran is in Turkey’s geopolitical interest, the hegemony that Israel is establishing in the Middle East risks cancelling out any potential Turkish gains.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently declared his intention to forge a new “hexagon” of alliances designed to outflank an “emerging radical Sunni axis.” The regional counter-alliance that Netanyahu envisions would pointedly include Greece and the Greek-ruled part of Cyprus. Echoing the anti-Turkish statements of other leading Israeli politicians, former Israeli Prime Minister and opposition politician Naftali Bennett claimed that Turkey is a threat to Israel, and accused it of forming a regional axis “similar to the Iranian one.”
IMPLICATIONS:
On March 17, Erdoğan in turn alleged that “Israel is led by a network that considers itself superior to others and is gradually dragging the region toward a disaster.” “We all know that the attacks targeting Gaza first then Yemen and Lebanon, and most recently Iran, are not solely motivated by security concerns,” Erdoğan opined. In a speech to the Turkish parliament in October 2024, Erdoğan asserted that the Jewish state harbored designs on Anatolia. Voicing similar concerns, Foreign Minister Fidan in a recent interview said that “they (the Israelis) are after not security, they are after more land.” “So long as they don’t give up this idea, there will always be a war in the Middle East,” Fidan contended.
Yet somewhat inconsistently, Fidan dismissed the suggestion that Turkey could be the next target for Israel, while adding that “as long as Netanyahu is there, Israel will always identify somebody as an enemy.” Downplaying the notion of an Israeli threat to Turkey, Fidan insisted that “if not Turkey, they would name some other country in the region.” It’s clear that Turkey seeks to avoid a confrontation with Israel, but Israel’s avowed determination to check Turkey inevitably puts the two countries on a collision course. Fidan acknowledged that the Iran war has provided Turkey with an increased incentive to step up its own production of weapons and air defenses. Yet Turkey’s main defense against Israel is not military, but societal.
Turkey’s leaders are haunted by the fear that Israel will exploit Turkey’s ethnic divisions, as statements by Israeli officials indeed attest to. In November 2024 Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described the Kurdish people as victims of Turkish and Iranian oppression and Israel’s “natural ally” and called for strengthening Israel’s ties with them. Cognizant of Israeli intentions, Erdoğan in his speech to the Turkish parliament in October 2024 emphasized the need to “fortify the home front” in the face of “Israeli aggression.” Co-opting the Kurds is a national security imperative for Turkey, and Kurdish reactions to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran have vindicated Ankara’s reconciliation since 2024 with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan.
While the United States and Israel have sought to mobilize Kurdish support in Iran and among Kurdish groups in Iraq in an effort to break Iran apart and bring down the Islamic Republic, Tülay Hatimoğulları, the co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Democracy and Equality (DEM) Party, denounced the war as an act of imperialism. Duran Kalkan, a leading representative of the PKK – which has officially dissolved -- stated that the Kurds are not going to serve anyone else’s military or other interests. Kalkan also defended that a solution in Iran must be reached by the peoples of Iran themselves and preserve the integrity of the country.
After Iran came under the U.S.-Israeli attack, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who in October 2024 initiated the latest Turkish opening to the Kurds when he held out the prospect of Öcalan’s release, asked his critics “do you now understand our purpose, why we have invoked Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood?” Meanwhile, Turkey’s former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, the leader of the conservative Future Party, warned that Israel could try to derail Turkey’s peace initiative with the Kurds by provoking ethnic violence in Turkey, a statement that mirrors the fear-mongering of Israeli right-wing politicians.
Turkey’s electorate will now more than ever be looking for national leadership that conveys strength, which puts the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) at a disadvantage. The CHP is animated by an idealistic faith in the discarded liberal order and struggles to stay relevant in the shadow of the war. The regional conflagration has overshadowed the trial of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the imprisoned presidential candidate of the CHP that began on March 9. For a majority, Erdoğan personifies the national strength that Turkey relies on in an anarchic and illiberal world. According to a recent poll, conducted a few weeks before the outbreak of the Iran war, 58 percent said that they would vote for Erdoğan if there was a risk of war while 20 percent said they would elect Özel. Only a few percent said they would vote for İmamoğlu in times of war.
CONCLUSION:
Provided that he succeeds in maintaining Turkish neutrality and in shielding Turkey from the fallout of the Iran war, Erdoğan’s standing with the Turkish public will presumably be bolstered. But Erdoğan nonetheless faces difficult challenges and dilemmas ahead, as his personal power ambitions and national security imperatives ultimately cannot be reconciled.
Democracy must be restored if Turkey is to consolidate its home front. Having to contend with Israel’s regional domination and expansionism, Turkey is compelled to accommodate Kurdish aspirations, something that Erdoğan has so far been extremely reluctant to do. And societal reconciliation will elude Turkey if reforms for the Kurds are coupled with oppressive measures against the main opposition party.
While Erdoğan’s foreign policy leadership may appear well suited for the perilous moment, his authoritarian rule isn’t.
AUTHOR'S BIO:
Halil Karavel is a Senior Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center and the Editor of the Turkey Analyst. He is the author of Why Turkey is Authoritarian: From Atatürk to Erdoğan (Pluto Press).
By Emil Avdaliani
Turkey and Saudi Arabia have pledged to elevate bilateral relations by expanding cooperation in defense and renewable energy spheres, marking a new page in bilateral relations. Turkey’s engagement with Saudi Arabia is expected to grow as the two countries’ geopolitical ambitions align from Syria to Sudan to Yemen. For Turkey, boosting the relations with Saudi Arabia fits into its broader effort of containing Israel and improving ties with key Middle East actors. Given that Saudi Arabia too has much at stake in Syria’s economic and political rehabilitation as well as in the Horn of Africa, its alignment with Ankara is now accelerating at a full speed. Another key driver of the growing alignment between the two countries has been their expanding military cooperation. The Saudi-Turkish alignment is also about the middle power activism, based on the recognition that a multi-aligned foreign policy is the order of the day, providing space and opportunities for geopolitical maneuvering. Nonetheless, Turkey and Saudi Arabia will refrain from building an official alliance as it would limit their freedom of maneuvering.
BACKGROUND: On February 3, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Riyadh where he met Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The two sides pledged to elevate bilateral relations by expanding cooperation in defense and renewable energy spheres marking a new page in bilateral relations.
The two countries have not always enjoyed positive ties. In the recent past, divergent strategic visions on most of the conflicts in the Middle East kept Riyadh and Ankara apart. By 2021, however, the strategic environment shifted. Turkey’s outreach to its regional competitors –including Saudi Arabia – began amid a “de-escalation moment,” driven by economic constraints after the pandemic and uncertainty about long-term United States security commitments.
One of the key drivers of the growing alignment between the two countries has been the expanding military cooperation. Riyadh wants to become less dependent on foreign supplies of military hardware and boost domestic military production. As a major military exporter, Turkey’s experience in know-how is key in that regard. The two countries have signed a string of military deals over the past few years. For instance, during President Erdoğan’s tour of the Gulf countries in 2023, Saudi Arabia agreed to buy Turkish drones; moreover, the package was explicitly tied to industrial cooperation such as technology transfer and joint production leading to long-term high-technology development. Later the same year, the Saudi side announced a strategic agreement with the Turkish defense producer Baykar to localize drone manufacturing in the kingdom. Another area of ongoing cooperation is joint investment in Turkey’s KAAN fighter project.
There is also a burgeoning cooperation in renewable-energy sphere. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have now signed an agreement which will involve Saudi investment of $2 billion to build two 1,000MW solar farms in Sivas and Karaman (2,000MW first phase) in Turkey. The joint statement released by the Turkish and Saudi leaders also emphasized cooperation on grid interconnection feasibility studies, energy storage, energy efficiency, and clean hydrogen. Relatedly, bilateral trade had reached $8 billion in 2025 and around 400 projects in Saudi Arabia worth more than $30 billion were carried out through the involvement of Turkish companies.
This strategic pragmatism is embodied Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. The pursuit of economic diversification and local defense-industrial capacity has created incentives to engage a capable regional producer (Turkey) rather than relying exclusively on traditional Western suppliers, while also preserving flexibility in an increasingly multipolar environment. This logic is evident in the emphasis on technology transfer and localisation in the defence relationship, and in expanding energy cooperation beyond hydrocarbons into renewables.
IMPLICATIONS: Crucially, there is also a wider geopolitical context that is pushing Turkey and Saudi Arabia closer. Across the Middle East, from Yemen to Iran to Syria, the two countries’ foreign policies are increasingly aligned. Ankara and Riyadh have both opposed Israel’s war in Gaza. This is not only out of Islamic solidarity but more based on shared strategic calculations, chiefly to contain Israel. The latter’s military power and regional influence has grown since 2023 when the war in Gaza broke out. Since then, the Jewish state has defeated Iran’s allies, Hezbollah and Hamas and intermittently bombed the Houthis in Yemen, also part of the Iran-backed Axis of Resistance. And since the downfall of the Assad regime in Syria, Israel has carried out a systemic aerial campaigning against military assets across Syria. Tel-Aviv’s calculus has been clear. It has acted against the growing Turkish influence in Syria.
Israel’s projection of power reached the Persian Gulf when Hamas’ representation in Doha was targeted shattering the sense of security in the region as the United States, which has a military base in Qatar, stood by. In late 2025 Tel-Aviv recognized the breakaway Somaliland as independent state signaling Israel’s intentions in the Horn of Africa. Israel’s goal is to move as closely as possible to Yemen to better target and contain the Houthis. Yet, the move is ultimately also about containing Turkey’s ambitions in Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia. Containing Israel, therefore, now a key foreign policy goal of Turkey and given that Saudi Arabia too has much at stake in Syria’s economic and political rehabilitation as well as in the Horn of Africa, its alignment with Ankara is now accelerating at a full speed.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia align around the idea of a united Yemen and are determined to thwart the secessionism in the south of the country. Ankara and Riyadh share a similar approach in relation to Sudan and especially regarding Syria, where President Ahmed al-Sharaa has been supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia in his endeavor to bring the Kurds into the central state’s fold.
Riyadh’s openness to expand relations with Turkey is also linked to the kingdom’s ongoing tensions with the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia wants to balance Abu-Dhabi, and Ankara is a good candidate in that regard. Moreover, Turkey itself has strategic interests in the regions -- from Yemen to the Horn of Africa -- where the Saudi-UAE rift has materialized and has increased its engagement through military and economic cooperation. Neither Ankara nor Riyadh want to see a nuclear Iran, but oppose a U.S. attack against Iran as a weakened and destabilized Iran would further shift the regional balance of power in Israel’s favor.
While moving closer, Turkey and Saudi Arabia nonetheless remain hesitant to form an official alliance as a formalized relationship would constrain their freedom of maneuver. Although there have been reports that Turkey has exhibited an interest in joining the Saudi-Pakistani military alliance, Ankara has allegedly refrained from doing so.
Turkey is a NATO member and joining the Saudi-Pakistan alliance would have brought additional security responsibilities that Ankara does not want to take on officially, notwithstanding that Turkey’s relations with Pakistan have reached unprecedented highs whether in security, military or economic spheres. Thus, the ongoing alignment should not be mistaken for a formal alliance in the making. It rests on a convergence of interests – regional stability, autonomy from great-power constraints -- and offers mutually beneficial economic opportunities; it is pragmatic and not ideological.
CONCLUSION: For Turkey, boosting the relations with Saudi Arabia fits into its broader effort of containing Israel and improving ties with key Middle East actors. It was therefore no coincidence that Turkish President Erdoğan after his trip to Saudi Arabia visited Egypt, a major regional player involved in the efforts to bring the war in Gaza to an end.
The Saudi-Turkish alignment is also about the middle power activism. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are key middle-powers and actors in the Middle East, and their alignment is ultimately boosted by a shared understanding that the world has entered into a multipolar period where multi-aligned foreign policy is the order of the day, providing space and opportunities for geopolitical maneuvering.
AUTHOR'S BIO: Emil Avdaliani is a research fellow at the Turan Research Center and a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia. His research focuses on the history of the Silk Roads and the interests of great powers in the Middle East and the Caucasus.
Earlier Articles
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Joint Center PublicationsOp-ed Halil Karaveli "The Rise and Rise of the Turkish Right", The New York Times, April 8, 2019 Analysis Halil Karaveli "The Myth of Erdogan's Power", Foreign Policy, August 29, 2018 Analysis Svante E. Cornell, A Road to Understanding in Syria? The U.S. and Turkey, The American Interest, June 2018 Op-ed Halil Karaveli "Erdogan Wins Reelection", Foreign Affairs, June 25, 2018 Article Halil Karaveli "Will the Kurdish Question Secure Erdogan's Re-election?", Turkey Analyst, June 18, 2018 Research Article Svante E. Cornell "Erbakan, Kisakürek, and the Mainstreaming of Extremism in Turkey", Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, June 2018 Analysis Svante E. Cornell "The U.S. and Turkey: Past the Point of No Return?", The American Interest, February 1, 2018 Op-ed Svante E. Cornell "Erdogan's Turkey: the Role of a Little Known Islamic Poet", Breaking Defense, January 2, 2018 Research Article Halil Karaveli "Turkey's Authoritarian Legacy", Cairo Review of Global Affairs, January 2, 2018
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