The fluorescent lights inside the Istanbul courthouse hummed faintly as lawyers carried thick binders across the polished floor. A clerk began reading the indictment slowly, page by page, from a document that ran well past three thousand pages. At the defense table sat Ekrem İmamoğlu, the former mayor of Istanbul and one of the few politicians widely believed capable of defeating Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a competitive national election.

Outside the building, the cameras were pointed somewhere else.

American and Israeli aircraft were striking Iranian targets. Oil markets were surging. Diplomats were scrambling to prevent the conflict from widening across the Middle East. For the moment, the global news cycle had shifted hundreds of miles south toward the Persian Gulf.

Inside the courtroom, another political contest was unfolding in relative quiet.

The two events were not unrelated.

The Iran war is being treated primarily as a military crisis centered on Tehran and the Gulf. In practice it is already reshaping the strategic leverage of countries that sit around the conflict’s perimeter. Few governments are positioned to gain more influence from that shift than Turkey’s. Geography has always made Turkey difficult to ignore; war makes it nearly impossible.

At the moment the conflict remains limited to air strikes, missile exchanges, and covert operations against Iranian facilities. Yet even without a full regional war, the shockwaves are spreading outward through energy markets, diplomatic channels, and migration routes. Those secondary effects are where Ankara’s leverage begins to grow.

Turkey sits at the intersection of four unstable regions: Europe, the Middle East, the Black Sea basin, and the Caucasus. During calm periods that geography produces diplomatic friction. During crises it produces strategic value. When instability spreads across multiple regions at once, the country sitting between them becomes a gatekeeper.

Europe learned that lesson once already. In 2015 and 2016, as the Syrian war drove millions of people toward the European Union, governments from Berlin to Athens found themselves politically overwhelmed by sudden migration. Anti-immigrant parties surged across the continent and domestic politics convulsed. Brussels ultimately struck an agreement with Ankara in which Turkey limited refugee flows toward Greece in exchange for billions of euros in financial support and political concessions.¹

The deal revealed a blunt reality that European leaders rarely say aloud: Turkey controls one of the principal valves through which Middle Eastern instability reaches Europe.

The Iran war threatens to reopen that valve. If violence spreads beyond Iran’s borders, displacement could ripple outward through Iraq, Lebanon, or Syria before reaching Turkish territory. From there, the path north into Europe is short. Even the possibility of renewed migration is enough to reshape European diplomacy.

The war is therefore doing something subtle but important: it is raising the price Europe is willing to pay for Turkish cooperation.

Migration is only one part of that equation. The conflict is also reviving attention to Turkey’s military capabilities at a moment when Europe is reassessing its own security architecture.

Turkey possesses NATO’s second-largest military after the United States, a fact that often fades into the background during periods of relative stability. In a region suddenly ringed by war, that statistic matters again. Turkish territory anchors NATO’s southeastern flank, controlling airspace and maritime corridors across the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

At the same time Ankara has spent the past decade building a defense industry that produces drones, armored vehicles, missile systems, and naval equipment for export. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Turkey has become one of the fastest-growing arms exporters in the world, driven largely by the rapid international adoption of its drone platforms.²

European governments that once framed relations with Ankara primarily in terms of democratic standards now increasingly discuss defense coordination, migration management, and energy security. The shift has been gradual but unmistakable. When governments face immediate security concerns, geopolitical necessity tends to outrank political discomfort.

Turkey also occupies a rare diplomatic position in the current conflict map. Unlike many Western governments, Ankara maintains working relationships with actors on nearly every side of the region’s overlapping crises. Turkish officials speak regularly with Iran, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, European governments, and the United States.

That network allows Ankara to attempt a role it has cultivated repeatedly over the past decade: mediator.

During the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Turkey hosted negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials and helped broker a temporary arrangement allowing Ukrainian grain exports to move through the Black Sea. The agreement did not end the war, but it reinforced Turkey’s reputation as one of the few countries capable of maintaining communication across geopolitical fault lines.

The Iran war offers a similar opportunity. Turkish diplomats have already signaled their willingness to facilitate negotiations aimed at containing the conflict. Even when mediation produces little concrete progress, the act of hosting discussions strengthens Ankara’s geopolitical relevance. In diplomacy, relevance is a form of power.

For Erdoğan, that external leverage intersects directly with domestic politics.

The trial unfolding in Istanbul illustrates why. Human Rights Watch has described the prosecution of İmamoğlu as part of a broader effort to weaken political challengers to Erdoğan’s government.³ The indictment spans thousands of pages and includes hundreds of defendants connected to the Istanbul municipal administration, a scope that Turkish opposition figures argue is designed to dismantle the political network surrounding the country’s most prominent opposition figure before the next national election cycle.

In previous years cases like this routinely triggered strong criticism from European governments. Statements from Brussels condemning democratic backsliding in Turkey were common.

This time the reaction has been quieter.

Part of the reason is simple attention economics. The Iran war dominates diplomatic agendas, energy markets, and military planning. But the quieter response also reflects a deeper calculation. Europe needs Turkey more during regional instability than it does during calm periods. That dependency does not eliminate criticism of Erdoğan’s domestic policies, but it changes the threshold at which governments are willing to escalate it.

None of this means the war is purely beneficial for Turkey. In fact, the same conflict that enhances Ankara’s geopolitical leverage also threatens its economic stability.

Turkey imports most of its energy, making the country highly sensitive to oil price spikes. Prolonged disruption in Persian Gulf supply routes could feed directly into inflation inside Turkey’s already fragile economy. Rising fuel costs would place additional pressure on households and complicate Erdoğan’s efforts to stabilize the Turkish lira after several turbulent economic years.

Migration pressures also carry domestic risks. Turkey already hosts millions of Syrian refugees, and public tolerance for the financial and social burden has begun to erode. Another large influx of displaced people could intensify nationalist backlash and strain government resources.

For Ankara, the most advantageous outcome is therefore not chaos but calibrated instability: a regional environment in which rivals are weakened, Turkey’s strategic value increases, and the costs of conflict remain manageable.

Late in the afternoon the courthouse doors opened again. Lawyers emerged to speak with reporters while police moved barricades along the street. The hearing had lasted most of the day.

Across the region, meanwhile, diplomats were still trying to contain a widening war.

Those two scenes — a political trial in Istanbul and a conflict spreading across the Middle East — might appear unrelated at first glance. In reality they are linked by the same geopolitical mechanism.

Wars do not simply redraw borders or destroy infrastructure. They also redistribute leverage. When instability spreads across multiple regions simultaneously, the countries positioned between those regions gain strategic weight.

Turkey has occupied that crossroads for centuries.

What the Iran war has done is remind the rest of the world that the gatekeeper often becomes most powerful when everyone else is looking somewhere else.

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Bibliography

1. European Council. EU-Turkey Statement on Migration. March 18, 2016. Agreement establishing financial assistance and cooperation to manage refugee flows from Turkey to the European Union.

2. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Trends in International Arms Transfers 2025. Data identifying Turkey as one of the fastest-growing global arms exporters.

3. Human Rights Watch. “Türkiye: Leading Opponent of Erdoğan on Trial.” March 2026. Analysis of the prosecution of Istanbul politician Ekrem İmamoğlu and its implications for democratic governance.