What is Driving Turkey's Foreign and Security Policy Agenda?

What is Driving Turkey's Foreign and Security Policy Agenda?

From Global Security Briefing by The Royal United Services Institute

March 25, 2026 · 49 min · Season 1 · Episode 118

About this episode

This episode analyzes Turkey's foreign and security policy agenda, focusing on its relationship with Iran and regional diplomacy.

As the Middle East is facing grave uncertainty against the backdrop of what is being called the 'Third Gulf War', Ankara is managing an uneasy relationship with Iran. Turkey is projecting itself as a more consequential regional actor across a variety of regional security spaces and is often described as a 'middle power'. In this episode of Global Security Briefing, Dr Neil Melvin is joined by Dr Burcu Ozcelik, RUSI Senior Research Fellow, to analyse Turkey's relationship with Iran and the main limits of Turkey's regional approach to diplomacy. This episode explores: · How Turkey approaches peacebuilding in the Middle East. · What Turkey's regional role is across different theatres in the Caucasus, Somalia and Iran. · The limits of eastern Mediterranean security architecture that excludes Turkey. · What British and European policymakers should learn from Turkey's approach to diplomacy. This podcast episode is part of a policy series for the ' Turkey's Peacebuilding in a Disordered Middle East ' project of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) network. The Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin is funded by Stiftung…

People in this episode

Host: Dr Neil Melvin

Guest: Dr Burcu Ozcelik

Topics covered

  • Turkey's foreign policy
  • Middle East security
  • Iran relations
  • peacebuilding
  • regional diplomacy
  • eastern Mediterranean security

Keywords

  • Turkey
  • Iran
  • Middle East
  • diplomacy
  • security
  • peacebuilding
  • Caucasus
  • Somalia
  • eastern Mediterranean

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Royal United Services Institute, Centre for Applied Turkey Studies, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Stiftung Mercator, Federal Foreign Office

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