Erdogan’s Geopolitical Aggression Is Less Unique in a World With Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu

Since January, many observers have warned that US president Donald Trump has been traveling in the same authoritarian path that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants. Just last week, Trump threatened to replace Washington’s mayor, the elected, Washington, with a favorite tactic of Erdogan’s government. Good news, if it is not very comfortable, is that although the speed of the collapse raises anxiety, the United States still has ways to go before reaching the point where Turkey is a day.

But while Erdogan maintains his leadership in dismantling democratic institutions, he has succeeded in geopolitical provocations. Recently, Türkiye has emerged due to its repeated attacks on international standards. Now, though, these standards have been destroyed by a group of the largest and most aggressive actors, from Moscow to Washington, and Türkiye is almost quiet in comparison.

Since January, many observers have warned that US President Donald Trump has been traveling in the same authoritarian path that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants. Just last week, Trump threatened to replace Washington’s mayor, the elected, Washington, with a favorite tactic of Erdogan’s government. Good news, if it is not very comfortable, is that although the speed of the collapse raises anxiety, the United States still has ways to go before reaching the point where Turkey is a day.

But while Erdogan maintains his leadership in dismantling democratic institutions, he has succeeded in geopolitical provocations. Recently, Türkiye has emerged due to its repeated attacks on international standards. Now, though, these standards have been destroyed by a group of the largest and most aggressive actors, from Moscow to Washington, and Türkiye is almost quiet in comparison.

Over the past decade, Türkiye has moved from being a force to the situation to one review. In a series of conflicts, from Libya to Syria to the Caucasus, Ankara used his military power to tilted regional dynamics in its favor. Amid a great deal of noise, these interventions were created on the ground, which helps to secure the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the arrest of Azerbaijani from Nagorno Karabakh.

In addition to accelerating arms exports and expanding military bases abroad, Türkiye also sparked a warning between its neighbors by embracing the mapping and uncommon rhetoric. In early 2020, Türkiye made new, aggressive naval demands at the expense of Greece, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that Greece was losing its sovereignty over a series of islands off the Turkish coast. Erdogan’s political allies began to flash the maps that showed parts of Greece as Turkish lands. Erdogan warned himself of Athens, “the islands that they occupy do not bind us, we will do what is necessary when the time comes. As we say, we can suddenly come in one night.”

But according to today’s standards, this hardly records. Russia launched this shift with its widespread invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Then, after Hamas’s attack in 2023, Israel went on offensive parts, occupied Lebanon and Syria, and launched attacks against Iran, Yemen and Qatar. Closer to the house, Israel is also working to purify Gaza and the West Bank.

The US axis was more surprising and unexpected. Trump came to his position, the country’s promise, “It will consider itself a growing nation again,” specifically “expansion” [its] A guest. “He has expressed his attention again and again in buying the Panama channel, and made Canada the 51st country.

Türkiye, in turn, left quietly, compared to its previous neighbors and policies. This does not necessarily mean that her ambitions have been gone, but rather have a lot to deal with him. For one reason, Türkiye’s aggressive actions were born with a major reaction. By the early twenties of the last century, these provocations helped create a deep alignment between France, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which all sought to contain Türkiye. During the past few years, Ankara has worked hard to calm this coalition and defuse this coalition.

Now, after she got a geopolitical flight with the collapse of the Assad regime, Türkiye is working to unify its gains there. This has become more difficult because of the intervention of Israel, which required Ankara to move carefully to avoid launching the direct confrontation. At the local level, Erdogan is promoting the seizure of the final authoritarian power, as it seeks to crush and the main opposition party in the country.

Türkiye may also discover that it is difficult to work in an environment in which everyone has become rogue. Being a single review force included in the NATO alliance was a relatively safe place. Erdogan was hoping to retreat with American power, which would have more space for maneuvering, both at home or abroad, while allies like Greece and Israel grew more than that without their sponsor. Instead, the sudden transformation of the United States under Trump simultaneously risk enabling both Russian and Israeli, leaving the region a more dangerous place for Turkey.

But if the unwanted aspirations of the great and neighboring powers have led to the complexity of the calculus calculation in Ankara, they also provided opportunities. Erdogan’s regime has tried repeatedly to restore strained relations with the former allies based on common concerns about excitement of others. First, Ankara turned Türkiye to the Biden administration as a necessary partner in the containment of Russia. Now that Trump has become more compatible with Moscow, Türkiye has retracted Europe’s attractiveness. The new Ankara argument is that only with the military support of Turkey, the Europeans can hope to contain Russia without Washington.

At the same time, it made Israel’s increasingly restricted behavior Türkiye seem less threatening compared to the eyes of its Arab neighbors. Egypt and the Gulf show the most coordinated content with Türkiye in Syria and around the region, to the extent that they believe that Ankara can be the weight of a budget for Israel.

The former foreign minister of Erdogan, Ahmed Davoglu, was praised and criticized and mocked his “new aromatic” ambitious vision of the Turkish regional authority. While Davutoglu’s geopolitical dreams may be great, what emerges in the past is that they were ultimately agreed with liberal assumptions after the Cold War.

In the most ideal, its copy of the Turkish influence seemed a lot, such as the European Union of Balkans and the Middle East, where Türkiye plays the economic and diplomatic role in Germany. Like the expression of the United States of the liberal international system, it was a model of the Turkish authority, which promised to pay profits for all concerned.

As my colleague Silim Coro wrote, there has always been an unreasonable thing about framing the positive victory of these geopolitical visions. Certainly, people at the recipient were not always convinced. But at best, they made it possible for other countries to buy to America – and for the short, Turkish stimulus – as a useful project for both parties. Now, some archaeological discourse aside, this frame ended. At best, countries can appeal to others as the least evil – a temporary partner in the face of a greater threat.

After embracing the enthusiasm of a new era of temptation, Türkiye suddenly finds itself in a crowded field. The world entered a period of risk political geography, which is suffering from competing efforts to rewrite the rules and redrawing the borders. If the past is never a victory, as the liberal Umayyads loved us to believe, it is completely possible to prove this future clearly.