Sometimes categorized as subversive by other NATO countries, Ankara’s policies underscore the pragmatic and reasonable alternatives that are now available to those middle powers willing to break with the ideological orthodoxies of the past. By successfully leveraging its geographical location, relative wealth and political stability, and desire to resist outside power dominance in its region, Turkey’s recent foreign policy positions indicate the likely future course of other middle-power states that occupy similarly critical spatial positions in an ever more regionally-based and multipolar world.

Around the world, several other countries also occupy such a high-value strategic property and their growing regional power similarly escapes the attention of great powers who see these nations simply as useful levers in their blocization schemes, to be marshaled to advance their global interests without any real autonomy of their own. This fixation on binary thinking blinds many to the intermediate space occupied by countries that can project significant power (rivaling a great power) but only in very specific regional contexts.

While Turkey has not entirely shed the cloak of old ideologies such as pan-Turkism that could distort their real interests with romantic and globalist dreams, Ankara’s real power capability has so far limited their ambitions to the East Mediterranean. Nevertheless, over-extension remains a real possibility that could squander the natural geographic and logistical advantages held by regionally rooted middle powers: the temptation to act like a “mini-empire” can be powerful, but the imperial drive is also corrosive as evident in the downfall of the Ottoman state.

Although, structurally and materially, Turkey cannot project power globally in the foreseeable future, a middle power’s regional sources of power and its constrained global capacity should not blind us to the critical role it plays in the power struggles in its particular region. If anything, the strong showing of Turkey’s opposition in the recent municipal elections shows that the desire for Turkey’s strategic assertiveness is not dictated from the top down but embraced by much of the general public, who demand their leaders prioritize their near-abroad like Palestine rather than focus on the more distant ambitions (such as in Central Asia) as Erdogan did before the Ukraine War. A more independent line from Ankara on the Gaza war is an important example of this trend, which will likely intensify if the opposition gains power. Notably, the most important and decisive of these electoral turnarounds was that of the strategically critical city of Istanbul itself, with the electorate seemingly rejecting the fact that Erdogan’s rhetoric on Israel has not impacted bilateral relations or produced effective action by the government to bring an end to the hostilities in Gaza. Regardless of the changing vagaries of domestic politics, Turkey as a middle power will continue to insist on its strategic actorness in the East Mediterranean, to the point that any impression of appeasement by its political elites could incite a populist reaction.