WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 25: U.S. President Donald Trump (R) shakes hands with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on September 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump has signaled that the U.S. might lift a ban on F-35 sales to Turkey during Erdogan’s first visit to the White House since 2019. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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The previous column covered the Trump White House summit for Central Asian leaders and how that region’s rise will rejig global power balance against Russia and China (and Iran). The column points out how the chief beneficiary of this rise must be Erdogan because the redirected trade of all the Stans will pass through Turkey. But Erdogan’s involvement further south in the Middle East, in Syria and Gaza, could easily lead to his undoing. His loudly populist championing of Hamas and, in Syria, his support for Islamist forces, some of which are locking horns with Israeli interests, creates risky flashpoints. He does so as part of his Neo-Ottoman (Caliphate redux) posturing which extends as far as encouraging Pakistan in the other direction. This, in turn, alienates India.
Generally speaking, though, Erdogan’s public aspiration as leader of Islam threatens to displace the Saudis and infuriates them. And will ultimately anger Washington too by inciting a populist challenge to the Abraham Accords. To some degree, this positions Türkiye in the regional role previously played by Iran, with all the same enemies – and no allies. Long term, the country may well end up facing active dangers as did Iran. But with the leading media organs largely under Erdogan’s influence, the Turkish populace remains ignorant of the dangers to them of his foreign policies. Instead, they are regaled by images of his participation in summits with the Stans, his part in the recreation of pan-Turkist alliances across Central Asia, and his meetings with Trump.
This, for the rest of the world, is perhaps the most salient aspect of Erdogan’s regime, namely his successful embodiment of the populist protocols as a replicable code, and in particular how he uses foreign policy to enhance domestic power. Here is a penetrating interview with a Turkish expert who wrote an academic article on the topic. The discussion appears on the podcast ‘Turkey Book Talk’, highly recommended for anyone who follows the country and the region. The intro says “the conversation looks at how Erdogan uses foreign policy, defense policy, and strongman diplomacy to burnish his reputation and consolidate domestic support for the regime”.
The interviewed academic, Senem Aydin-Duzgit, points out how, in the absence of institutional watchdogs and media scrutiny, populist leaders make personal deals to perpetuate each other in power. Much of the talk is focused on the 2023 Turkish national election where, for example, foreign financial boosts (from Qatar and Russia) allowed the ruling party, in effect, to bribe the electorate. The post-election costs, in the form of debt, inflation or geostrategic concessions, never get fully understood by the public as cause and effect – one important reason why populists stay in power. Which is why a critical mass of independent media or its absence matters hugely in such countries. In effect, the implication is that the ‘Türkiye First’ equivalent policy of Erdogan, is anything but. Simultaneously, such figures spend a great deal of time on photo-ops at summits with world leaders.
Erdogan’s equivalent of a Türkiye First policy is distinctly contradicted by the amount of time spent posturing as world statesman – and eventually by the number of adventures he initiates for Turkey abroad, diplomatic, military, big business and otherwise. As the academic says in the podcast, leaders following the populist script encourage the populace to identify their own importance with that of the leader, amplified by a supine supporting media. Erdogan’s preference is to be seen with Trump and Putin chiefly, being treated as an equal. His early noisy public gestures of independence from the US, Nato and the West, were crucial to the message of elevating his country to equality with the allied superpowers. To that end, the reader will recall that he purchased S-400 missiles from Moscow, and initiated Russian nuclear plants in Turkey. Here, again, Erdogan is taking his country down the path of Iran – with ominous implications for the future.
The Mullah regime in Iran came into being in the pre-populist era, although Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise established early parameters of such rule. Erdogan’s domestic and foreign policy serves as a model of the new kind of regime, not least how these leaders help keep each other in power. How they follow copycat protocols: Pyramiding the economy with oligarchic allies at the top, privatizing state expenditure and involving family in state business deals, hollowing legal institutions and politicizing them, using foreign policy for personal power and gain, destroying the empirical nature of information, indeed of truth itself, and much else. And helping their own political kind abroad, with expectations of reciprocity – beyond the public’s ken.
This does not mean that populist leaders will not defy other populist leaders. Erdogan shot down a Russian warplane over the Syria border in 2015. Moscow just attacked a Turkish-flagged freighter in Ukraine waters. But, in principle, they are unlikely to unseat each other when they are in the business of building an alternative world order among themselves. And when personal and political finances are so mutually dependent.