The Crisis Of Civilizational Identity In Turkish Foreign Policy

Turkey today presents itself as a rising regional power, yet its foreign conduct exposes a deeper structural duality—perpetually oscillating between East and West, Islam and secular nationalism, diplomacy and neo-imperial ambition. Despite its NATO membership, Ankara has refused to fully align with Western sanctions on Russia and instead expanded strategic ties with Moscow, including arms deals and energy cooperation. This is not merely a case of pragmatic hedging, but the reflection of a deeper geopolitical vision shaped by neo-Ottoman nostalgia.

Turkish foreign policy under Erdoğan has increasingly assumed the undertone of a neo-Ottoman civilizational project—an effort to position Turkey as the natural leader of the Muslim world. Yet this ambition inevitably brings it into ideological tension with the Islamic Republic of Iran. While Turkey retains a secular republican foundation—albeit with an Islamic-populist veneer—Iran represents a fundamentally different model rooted in political Islam, guided by Shiite clerical authority and metaphysical legitimacy. Unlike Turkey, Iran presents the only theologically grounded alternative to the Western liberal order—one that challenges not only its rhetoric but also its structural norms.

This divergence has manifested across various regional arenas. In Syria, following the weakening of the Assad regime and the ascent of Sunni militant factions, Turkey positioned itself as the dominant actor in shaping the post-Assad order—frequently in opposition to Iran’s support for the Syrian state. In the South Caucasus, Turkey’s military and political backing of Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict similarly reflected a broader rivalry with Iran for regional influence. While Ankara emphasizes Turkic solidarity and national interest, Tehran sees the region through a civilizational-religious lens rooted in Shiite identity and strategic resistance.

One of the most telling contradictions in Ankara’s foreign policy lies in its approach to Palestine. President Erdoğan has long portrayed himself as a champion of Gaza and a critic of Israeli policies. Yet behind this posture, Ankara has maintained robust diplomatic and economic ties with Tel Aviv. This dual-track policy has undermined Turkey’s credibility among resistance movements and cast doubt on its legitimacy as a pan-Islamic leader. It also reveals the underlying dilemma: whether Turkey’s leadership aspirations are truly ideological or simply strategic.

Notably, during the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, it was Iran—rather than most of Turkey’s Western allies—that swiftly expressed diplomatic support for Erdoğan’s government. Despite this, deep ideological distrust has persisted, particularly given Ankara’s enduring suspicion of Shiite influence and its discomfort with Iran’s clerically-based political model.

At its core, Turkey finds itself caught in an identity crisis: seeking legitimacy from the West, leadership in the East, and autonomy in its civilizational narrative. This strategic ambiguity is not merely tactical maneuvering—it reflects unresolved philosophical tensions about sovereignty, legitimacy, and the meaning of Islamic leadership in a post-Western world. Beneath the rhetoric of unity lies a persistent contradiction between nationalist secularism and religious symbolism, between imperial nostalgia and geopolitical pragmatism.

Understanding Turkey’s true position in the emerging multipolar order requires moving beyond surface-level analyses and confronting the deeper civilizational contradictions embedded in its foreign policy imagination—contradictions that may ultimately limit Turkey’s ability to become a coherent pole in the multipolar world.