Threads — tracked situations

Turkey is converting a decade of indigenisation into a self-reinforcing defence-industrial engine: $30bn of military spending in 2025 (22% routed through the national defence-industry fund), a record $8bn in export contracts signed in the first three days of SAHA 2026, and 2025 exports topping $10bn — a 48% jump that puts Ankara within reach of its top-10-exporter target for 2028. The sprint shows across every domain at once. Baykar unveiled three new kamikaze drones (K2, Sivrisinek, Mizrak) to swarm under TB2 command; Aselsan fielded Tufan USVs and the Kılıç family of kamikaze underwater drones plus Steel Dome electronic-warfare nodes; Roketsan scaled its Alka laser to 10kW as Steel Dome's hard-kill layer; and the Ministry of National Defence claimed a domestic-propellant breakthrough for the Yıldırımhan long-range ballistic missile. Two large exercises anchored the showcase — EFES-2026 closed with a record 50 nations and the first Bayraktar TB3 sorties from TCG Anadolu, and Sea Wolf-2/2026 put 125 naval assets across four seas with the first live use of the PIRANA kamikaze USV. Demand is following supply: Gulf states are buying Turkish air defence as US deliveries lag, CANiK's M3 FALCON counter-drone gun is shipping to Pakistan and Azerbaijan, and Ankara is selling itself as a co-production ecosystem rather than a catalogue. The binding constraints are economic (high inflation, currency volatility against a $30bn topline) and capability gaps the firms themselves flag — NATO-dependent high-end air defence and slipping timelines on Kaan, Altay and the MUGEM carrier.

The Iran war's near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz has turned Turkey's decade-old ambition to be a regional energy hub into an urgent strategy with hard commitments behind it. At the Istanbul Natural Resources Summit (22 May), Erdoğan declared a goal of full energy independence and Energy Minister Bayraktar unveiled a 'new energy architecture' — maximising the TANAP, TurkStream, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Iraq-Türkiye pipelines, $30 billion in grid investment, 20 GW of nuclear by 2050, and new corridors from Central Asia and the Gulf. The supply side firmed fast: BOTAŞ signed a 15-year, 33-bcm deal for Azerbaijan's Absheron field (from 2029), Turkey and Azerbaijan started piping 1.2 bcm/yr of Shah Deniz gas to Syria, and BOTAŞ signed an LNG MoU with Italy's Edison after Iranian strikes cancelled 17 Qatari cargoes. The transit map is shifting: BP hands BTC operatorship to SOCAR on 1 July 2026, and Turkey is now the sole pipeline route for Russian gas to Europe after the Ukraine corridor closed. Domestically, Sakarya output (9.5 mcm/day, targeting 45 mcm by 2028), the first Akkuyu reactor's imminent start, and renewables overtaking coal point at the same goal — cutting the ~57% import share that costs ~$60 billion a year. The binding constraint remains that Turkey still imports more than 90% of its gas and oil: the hub model depends on buying more than it consumes and re-exporting the surplus, so the leverage is real but the dependency is not yet gone.

Two and a half years into Mehmet Şimşek's orthodox-policy turn, Turkey's disinflation is being knocked off course by the US-Israel war on Iran. Annual CPI, which had fallen from a 2022 peak near 85% to roughly 30.9% in March, ticked back up to 32.37% in April and 32.61% in May as the Strait of Hormuz closure pushed energy inflation to ~47% in a country that imports ~99% of its gas and ~93% of its oil. The central bank under Governor Fatih Karahan held the policy rate at 37% and abandoned its forecast band, raising its end-2026 inflation target from 16% to 24% (and end-2027 from 9% to 15%); markets now price year-end CPI near 29% and USD/TRY around 51.6. Q1 GDP slowed to 2.5% YoY (from 3.4%) with industry contracting 0.8% and exports down 12.7%, while the March current-account deficit hit a three-year-high $9.6-9.67bn on the energy bill. Yet domestic readings are not uniformly grim — consumer confidence rose to a 14-month high of 85.8 in May — even as housing eats 29.3% of household budgets and authorities fined 1,200+ firms $8.6m for price-gouging. All eyes are on the data-heavy June and the central bank's June 11 rate decision, where most expect a hold at 37% and a minority a hike to 40%.

Erdoğan has used the courts to dismantle the leadership of Turkey's main opposition party from the inside. On 21 May an Ankara appeals court voided the CHP's November 2023 congress on 'absolute nullity' grounds, removing elected chair Özgür Özel and reinstating his predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu; by 25–26 May a judge had ordered the seizure of CHP headquarters in Ankara, a loyalist trustee was installed, and police stormed the building, dragging Özel out and dispersing protests in Ankara and Izmir with tear gas and water cannon. The party split into rival administrations — Kılıçdaroğlu holding the building and convening the High Disciplinary Board, Özel commanding the parliamentary group and rallying thousands for an immediate primary (an internal CHP poll put approval of his removal at just 11%). The backdrop is jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP's 2023 presidential pick, facing a sentence reported as high as 2,430 years; a parallel media purge (Tele 1 shut, its editor arrested on espionage charges); and AKP ally Devlet Bahçeli brokering a compromise congress while the opposition warns Erdoğan is engineering a snap election to escape term limits. Erdoğan, who denies any government role, hosts the 7–8 July NATO summit in Ankara as geopolitical cover, betting Western reliance on the Bosphorus and Trump's goodwill will mute criticism.

Turkey's 'terror-free Türkiye' initiative — the most serious attempt to end a 40-year insurgency since talks collapsed in 2015 — is grinding forward against friction Ankara insists is normal. President Erdoğan says the PKK disarmament is on track despite delays, blaming the slowdown on the US-Israeli war on Iran and on earlier YPG resistance in Syria, while insisting legal steps (lenient sentences, integration of surrendered fighters) come only after the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) verifies full disarmament. The architecture is unusual: MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, an ultranationalist who once treated any Kurdish overture as treason, brokered the opening and now coordinates the legislative track directly with Erdoğan; MİT chief İbrahim Kalın has framed the effort as durable state policy and vowed to sustain counterterrorism operations. The pro-Kurdish DEM Party — the parliamentary channel to jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan on İmralı — presses for simultaneous legal reform, which the AK Party refuses until disarmament is confirmed. The hardest knot is external: the Syrian SDF/YPG, the PKK's Syrian affiliate, and a March-2025 SDF–Damascus integration deal that has barely moved, compounded when Trump accused Kurdish groups of withholding weapons meant for Iranian protesters. Unconfirmed reports that SDF commander Mazlum Abdi was secretly taken to meet Öcalan show how tightly the Turkish and Syrian Kurdish tracks are now braided.

Turkey is absorbing three overlapping public-safety pressures at once. The disaster agency AFAD is in continuous response mode: it deployed 13,342 personnel and 5,656 vehicles to 110 landslide and rockfall incidents and floods across 30+ provinces (Tokat, Trabzon, Hatay, Giresun, Erzurum, Ankara) between May 21-31, after an earlier flood wave that hit Samsun and Çankırı with 333 reports. Authorities have pre-emptively locked down forests from June through October ahead of the wildfire season, after 2025 burned more than 81,000 hectares. The earthquake-safety legacy of the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş quakes (53,537 dead in Turkey, ~280,000 buildings destroyed) keeps surfacing in concrete ways — Israel's Istanbul consulate failed an earthquake-resilience inspection, is slated for demolition, and relocation could cost up to $6 million. In parallel, labour unrest is sharp: Doruk Madencilik miners from Eskişehir won unpaid wages and insurance after a nine-day Ankara march, sit-in and an eight-day hunger strike met with police pepper spray; on May 1 police arrested nearly 400 in Istanbul (including union official Başaran Aksu and TİP president Erkan Baş) amid ~30-40% inflation, even as Erdoğan pledged at the Presidential Complex to protect workers' rights. A new parliamentary land-use bill folding water-structure safety, carbon-sink forests and penalties for unauthorized construction ties the disaster and accountability strands together.

Through spring 2026 Ankara converted years of cautious dialogue into concrete connectivity: on 24 May Türkiye and Armenia opened the Akhalkalaki–Kars freight line to Armenian trade — Prime Minister Pashinyan calling it railway access to Russia, China, Kazakhstan and onward to the EU — and on 2 June Türkiye, Georgia and Azerbaijan launched full-capacity operations on the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK) railway, the backbone of the 'Middle Corridor' that cuts China–Europe transit to about 15 days. The same axis was reaffirmed on 8 June when Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan hosted the 10th Türkiye–Azerbaijan–Georgia trilateral foreign-ministers meeting in Istanbul, calling the format a 'guarantor of peace and stability' and the Middle Corridor 'one of the strategic backbones' of trilateral cooperation. Yet normalisation with Yerevan remains shallow: Vice-President Cevdet Yılmaz's May visit to the European Political Community summit in Yerevan was the first by a sitting Turkish VP, and direct trade is now possible in customs terms (final destination listed as 'Armenia/Türkiye') — but the 268-km land border has stayed sealed for 33 years, with not a single traveller crossing, and the Alican gate promised at year-start was still shut ahead of Armenia's 7 June election. The trajectory is building rather than steady: rail freight, the BP-to-SOCAR handover of the BTC pipeline, the Kars–Iğdır 'Zangezur' tender and the Aliyev–Pashinyan peace track all push toward an integrated, Russia-bypassing South Caucasus — but border opening stays hostage to the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace deal and to Armenian constitutional change Yerevan cannot make before its vote.

Turkey is running its long balancing act between Ukraine and Russia under sharper Black Sea pressure. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan used the 8 June Istanbul trilateral with Azerbaijan and Georgia to call peace in the Russia–Ukraine war 'essential for regional stability' and to warn of deteriorating Black Sea maritime security as the conflict spreads to civilian shipping — a warning the war made literal: on 28–29 May a Russian drone struck the Turkish-owned cargo ship ANT sailing from Odesa, injuring two Turkish crew and starting a fire, while the day before Ukrainian sea drones hit three Russian shadow-fleet tankers (James II, Altura, Velora) off Turkey's northern coast. Ankara condemned the ANT strike and pressed for restraint, but it does not join Western sanctions, keeps Russian energy flowing (TurkStream is now the sole pipeline route for Russian gas to Europe; Rosatom's $20bn-plus Akkuyu plant nears Unit 1 startup), and Turkish soil is named in a German bust of a €30m dual-use sanctions-evasion network feeding Russia's military. As mediator and gatekeeper of the straits, Turkey keeps a foot in both camps — backing Crimean Tatar rights and the war's victims while refusing to break with Moscow — and Zelensky's pre-winter diplomatic framework explicitly lists Turkey alongside the E3 and Nordics. By June 2026 the open question is whether Black Sea incidents force Ankara off the fence, or whether the cost of choosing keeps it balancing.

With the US-Israeli war on Iran in its fourth month and a fragile, repeatedly-broken ceasefire kept alive by Pakistani-Qatari mediation, Ankara has positioned itself as a NATO-member interlocutor that still talks to Tehran. FM Hakan Fidan runs an almost daily phone diplomacy — with Iran's Abbas Araghchi, Qatar's PM Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Pakistani mediators — converging on a single demand: reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stop it being 'used as a weapon.' Turkey backed the May regional bloc (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey) that pushed Trump toward a deal, offered post-agreement Hormuz demining, and tied de-escalation to 'neutralising Israeli provocations,' per Erdoğan. The line is mediation in the Iran file but rivalry in the vacuum a weakened Tehran leaves: Turkey is simultaneously courting EU/NATO ('the EU is incomplete without Türkiye'), building Hormuz-bypass corridors (Hejaz Railway to Oman, Development Road), and selling air defence to Gulf states. The constraint is structural — Turkey is Iran's managed rival yet its gas customer, and an Iran collapse would dump instability into Iraq and Syria on Ankara's border.

Eighteen months after the December 2024 fall of Bashar al-Assad and the installation of Ahmed al-Sharaa's HTS-rooted government, Turkey has become the dominant outside power in Syria — converting a decade of military intervention and refugee burden into reconstruction, energy and security leverage. The energy spine is now live: Erdoğan announced that Turkish-transited Azerbaijani gas (1.2 bcm/yr from Shah Deniz) is restarting Syrian power plants, and Energy Minister Bayraktar pitched an 'electricity version of TANAP' linking Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Bulgaria atop a $30bn Turkish grid upgrade. The corridor play is the strategic core: Ankara and Damascus revived the 2009 'Four Seas' rail/road/pipeline project (Foreign Ministers Fidan and al-Shaibani in Ankara), Sharaa pitched it at an EU summit in Cyprus drawing $28bn+ in 2025 investment deals, and Transport Minister Uraloğlu detailed a Hejaz Railway revival via Aleppo-Damascus-Jordan toward Oman plus the 1,200km Iraq Development Road — all framed as land alternatives to the Hormuz/Red Sea routes disrupted by the Iran war. Militarily Turkey hosted ~50 Syrian troops and 502 Libyans (both rival factions) at EFES-2026 near İzmir — the reconstituted Syrian army's first-ever foreign exercise — and runs joint MIT-Syrian intelligence operations (10 ISIL suspects detained, Assad-era chemical stocks being cleared with OPCW). Two frictions cut against the narrative: Ankara is policing the story at home — MIT demanded prosecution of journalist Abdullah Bozkurt over an exposé of its jihadi ties, and is prosecuting a former officer over Syrian-defector kidnappings — and the unresolved SDF/Kurdish question runs through the March-2025 integration deal and unconfirmed Mazlum Abdi–Öcalan contacts via a 'channel prepared by Turkey.' With 634,000 of 1.6M returnees coming from Turkey and Erdoğan offering to broker Hezbollah-Lebanon files with Washington, Turkey's Syria role is widening from security guarantor into regional power-broker.