In the Middle East’s diplomatic drama, Turkey takes centre stage

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Turkey is closing out 2025 as a pivotal Middle Eastern power broker, its influence resurgent amid shifting alliances that have pushed Ankara to the centre of diplomacy spanning from Syria to Gaza.

Twelve months ago, few could have predicted the speed – and irony – with which the tides would turn in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s favour.

Just five years after the US imposed sanctions on Turkey for its military campaign against Kurdish separatists in Syria, Washington is now throwing its weight behind the new Ankara-backed government in Damascus – despite its leader’s problematic past.

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Still, analysts say the West’s transactional turn suits Erdogan’s chief aim: neutralising Kurdish militants, both the PKK in northern Iraq and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

“Even if” Washington was brokering an arrangement between Damascus and the SDF, “that influence rests more on diplomatic brokerage than on sustained capacity” said Guy Burton, author of China and Middle East Conflicts.

“Its footprint there is limited, its goals are ambiguous, and the attention span of its principals, like Trump, is short,” he told This Week In Asia.

By contrast, Turkey’s interests are “direct and enduring”: securing its borders, fighting against the Kurdish insurgency and managing millions of refugees.

It also has the geographic proximity, military presence and political will to “remain engaged long after others have moved on”, according to Burton.

While Ankara might “occasionally find itself outmanoeuvred in specific negotiations, the structural realities of the region ensure its continued relevance”, he added.

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