As the Kurdish Studies Center, on the occasion of the first year of the new peace process that began in October 2024 and continues to this day, we are publishing analyses from a group of experts on various dimensions of the process. Through this series, we aim to meet the need of both society and policymakers for rigorous analysis by bringing different expert perspectives, field-based observations, and data into public discussion. We hope you find it a valuable read.

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In the First Year of the Process: Global Transformation, Regional Risks, and Security / Kadir Temiz

The international system has substantially forfeited the institutional stability and governance capacity to which we have grown accustomed since the Second World War. Moreover, as the normative and institutional architecture of the post-Cold War era erodes, what shall supersede this structure remains unclear. Rather than characterizing the current situation as a “new order,” it seems more accurate , as frequently encountered in the literature, to conceptualize it as the transition period between the dissolution of the old order and the as-yet-incomplete establishment of a new one.

Such transition periods are not merely temporal spans in which global power balances, economic relations, and institutional structures undergo reconfiguration. Yet, they are simultaneous periods in which the perception toward security and threat , and states’ survival strategies are fundamentally redefined. In an environment wherein great power competition intensifies, medium-sized actors endeavor to expand their room for maneuver, and regional crises become inextricably interwoven with global competition, security can no longer be elucidated through military capacity alone. The cornerstone variables of the emerging era—technology, big data, artificial intelligence, and digitalization—have neither been fully comprehended nor have the potential threats they engender been adequately delineated.

Precisely for this reason, it remains insufficient to interpret current developments in the Middle East solely through dichotomous dead ends such as “conflict versus non-conflict; resolution versus non-resolution; war versus peace.” The de-escalation of conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkey, the organization’s dissolution and the burning of weapons, discussions of post-conflict reconstruction in Syria, Israel’s destabilizing regional policies, and Turkey’s newly assumed posture within this picture constitute components of a more expansive transformation.

This analysis addresses this transformation through a tripartite analytical framework. Global-level order transition, regional-level trajectories toward state formation and centralization, and the reconceptualization of internal security in relation to development constitute the conceptual scaffolding of this analysis. This framework functions not merely as theoretical abstraction but rather as an analytical apparatus directly corresponding to developments on the ground.

1. Global Order Transition: Great Power Competition and Medium-Sized Actors

The most salient characteristic of contemporary global politics is the permanence of uncertainty. The United States-China competition, Russia’s revisionist maneuvers, and Europe’s lack of strategic direction  do not generate a power vacuum at the center of the international system; rather, they generate a fragmented order. Thus, the classical characteristics of transition periods become visible again. Great powers, while avoiding direct conflict , move the competition toward technology, new trade networks, and regional arenas. Medium-sized actors, rather than accepting total dependence, gravitate toward autonomy, risk aversion, and balancing strategies.

Consequently, risk-taking capacity diminishes while caution and graduated adaptation behaviors assume prominence. Yet this cautious position of actors, whilst proving insufficient to extinguish the uncertainty engendered by the aforementioned fragmented order, simultaneously harbors serious security and conflict risks at the systemic level.

For actors such as Turkey, whose military, economic, and diplomatic capacities exceed a particular threshold, this environment constitutes neither an unambiguous age of opportunity nor an inevitable period of crisis. The essential issue concerns which domains shall witness risk reduction and which shall experience the exercise of initiative. Consequently, explicating regional dynamics exclusively through the interventions of great powers risks eliding local and regional transformations.

2. Regional Order Transformation: A Trajectory Toward Centralization and State Formation

Over an extended duration, the Middle East was characterized as a region wherein state authorities had deteriorated, borders became permeable, and non-state armed actors constituted essential elements of the system. Yet this understanding has commenced reversing course in recent years.

Today, numerous actors within the region respond to the global uncertainty environment through a dual-track strategy. The first entails the augmentation of state capacity and the fortification of central authority. They pursue this through the exercise of will directed toward either incorporating non-state actors into the system or their elimination. The second encompasses the pursuit of an economic development model and the establishment of an existential nexus between security and economy, thereby advancing centralized political will in tandem with individual and societal transformation. Thus, a new model is being constructed linking security and development that conflict resolution frameworks had failed to establish so far, thereby producing an irreversible relationship of mutual interest and reciprocal confidence.

Developments that may be adduced as concrete manifestations of the first strategy include Iraq’s efforts toward governmental re-empowerment, Syrian discussions of transition from fragmented structure to controlled integration, and the re-emergence of statist aspirations in Lebanon and Yemen, alongside disarmament deliberations concerning non-state actors. These developments evince that the concepts of “state formation” and “centralization” have regained legitimacy within the regional system.

The second strategy pivots upon the conviction that the political and social order engendered by longstanding unsuccessful economic development models in the Middle East may progress favorably within the distinctive economic transformation of the twenty-first century. The prevalence in Gulf states of discussions pertaining to the “post-oil” era, wherein virtually every state pursues diverse vision proposals and alternative economic diversification modalities, the emergent alternative sources coincident with China’s economic ascendancy, the potential connectivity projects afforded by technological transformation, and the attendant discussions of new production and consumption paradigms are being vigorously debated throughout the region.

For Turkey, this transformation bears considerable determinative significance with respect to regional priorities. The fragmented configuration in Syria, by virtue of its consequences, remains directly conjoined with Turkey’s internal security, economic capacity, and regional integration aspirations. The same prioritized status obtains for Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf. In brief, the profound economic-political restructuring processes extending from the Gulf to the Red Sea, from East Africa to East Mediterranean geopolitics possess existential import for Turkey.

3. Local Order Transformation: The Hybrid Reconceptualization of Security and Development

The third analytical level pertains to how security is conceived. In recent years, not solely within Turkey but throughout the region writ large, formidable awareness has crystallized that confining security exclusively to military methodologies proves unsustainable. Even within an environment wherein armed threats have not entirely dissipated, the apprehension that such threats may be mitigated through economic development, public service delivery, and governance capacity has gathered force. Security now encompasses not merely the defense of borders but equally the production of prosperity, the amplification of integration, and the stewardship of social expectations.

In Iraq’s recent elections, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development (Imarat wa-Tanmiyah) coalition’s attainment of the highest vote share—notwithstanding the offset by enhanced parliamentary influence of militia formations—may be construed as a clear message from the Iraqi populace regarding the security-development nexus. Equally, Syria has traversed formidable challenges from December 8, 2024 to the present moment. Throughout this interval, Syria’s societal and political will has opted, in the proximate term, for a strategy centered upon development and welfare within the reconstruction process that prioritizes Syria’s security exigencies, superseding the lifting of sanctions and the securing of international legitimacy. This objective has been partially realized. Nonetheless, for comprehensive success, not merely the local order but equally the regional and international orders must advance along congruent trajectories.

The security relationship that Turkey has recently established with both neighbors undergoes transformation within this framework. Internal instability in both Iraq and Syria, coupled with the unsustainability of security and development problems, has impelled Turkey to elaborate its relations with both neighbors upon a more pragmatic model. Within this context, Turkey’s counter-PKK strategy, foremost among the concrete exemplifications of this transformation, constitutes the objective of a “Terror-Free Turkey and Terror-Free Region.” This process represents not merely a security question; it is simultaneously a matter of development and political normalization.

The United States and the Middle East

The extant position of the United States in the Middle East, contra frequent assertions, signifies not a withdrawal but rather a redefinition of the modality of engagement. From the American perspective, the issue does not consist of complete disengagement from the region; rather, it entails, under conditions of intensifying global competition, the circumscription of the strategic cost incurred by the Middle East to the United States and the devolution of the burden, to the fullest extent feasible, upon regional actors. Whilst American priorities prominently encompass competition with China, the Indo-Pacific axis, and European security, the Middle East is increasingly addressed as a risk domain requiring management. This approach entails the administration of crises rather than their resolution, and the employment of flexible and indirect balancing mechanisms in lieu of costly military engagement.

Within this framework, the American perspective upon Turkey is likewise undergoing discernible transformation. Turkey is no longer positioned in American eyes as a “frictionless ally” occupying a central position within normative compliance expectations; rather, it is positioned as an indispensable actor by virtue of its capacity to generate regional equilibrium. Turkey’s capacity to simultaneously conduct relations with Russia, Iran, Gulf states, and Europe aligns with American strategy of circumscribed engagement in the Middle East. This situation has precipitated the classical language of alliance between the two nations to be displaced by a more flexible relationship modality founded upon mutual tolerance and functionality. This novel form of relation reflects a pragmatic equilibrium understanding that seeks not the complete elimination of crises but their maintenance at manageable thresholds.

Turkey-Syria Line: The De-escalation of Armed Conflict: From Security to Politics, From Politics to Integration

The cessation of armed conflict within Turkey and the concomitant emergent trajectory toward integration in the Syrian arena ought not to be construed as merely a tactical security maneuver. This development portends a transformation in Turkey’s security architecture, configured over the preceding thirty years. Indeed, armed conflict long weighed heavily on Turkey’s domestic politics, foreign policy, and regional engagement, effectively locking a substantial part of state capacity into the security axis.

At the juncture presently reached, this encumbrance manifestly begins to yield as conflict de-escalates. This unlocking does not signify merely a diminution in security expenditures or a reduction in military risks. More substantially, it denotes that Turkey’s political and economic capacity becomes capable of reconsolidation with its security architecture.

The Reconceptualization of Internal Stability

The cessation of armed conflict occasions the reconsideration of the concept of internal stability. Over an extended duration, internal stability had been substantially conflated with the suppression of security threats. Yet as conflict de-escalates, stability progressively becomes a conception related to political representation, economic integration, and the governance of social expectations.

This situation establishes a critical inflection with respect to the Kurdish question being addressable through non-security instruments. Whereas the expansion of political and social space remains circumscribed within an environment wherein security is provisioned through military methodologies, the diminution of conflict enables diverse policy instruments to assume operational roles. In this sense, the issue is less about the simple optimism that ‘the threat has disappeared’ and more about a shift in how the threat is managed.

Normalization and Predictability in the Syrian Arena

The de-escalation of conflict along the Turkey-Syria line enables border security to settle upon a more foreseeable foundation. The Syrian arena, long characterized by uncertainty, instability, and fragmented authorities, had perpetually engendered a risk domain for Turkey. Endeavors directed toward integration incrementally transmute this risk domain into a governable space.

This transformation exhibits its repercussions across an expansive spectrum extending from the repatriation of displaced persons to commercial and logistical operations. The establishment of returns upon a rational foundation constitutes not merely a humanitarian undertaking but equally a determinative factor in social adaptation, public service provision, and economic programming. Analogously, the reactivation of frontier commerce and regional transit corridors harbors the potential to integrate Turkey’s southern passages with Iraq, the Gulf, and the Eastern Mediterranean into a more comprehensive architecture.

Syria’s evolution toward relative stabilization directly impacts Turkey’s diplomatic proceedings with regional and global actors. Whilst security-predicated friction domains with the United States contract, the tenor of Middle East-centered exchanges with Russia transforms; concurrently, enhanced cooperation avenues become accessible with Gulf states and Europe. In this way, Turkey seeks to build a new kind of relationship with regional actors by moving beyond the role of security provider and attempting to link security and economy through a broader definition of security.

What merits emphasis at this juncture is that Turkey’s augmented diplomatic maneuver capacity becomes feasible not through enhanced direct military force utilization but through risk reduction. In other terms, Turkey’s fortification relates not solely to ‘expanded capacity to exercise force’ but equally to ‘the capacity to operate with diminished risk.’

Israel’s Destabilizing Role and Turkey’s Equilibrating Position

Israel’s recent policies within the regional equation evince a destabilizing character. This is not circumscribed to the Palestinian question. Escalating tension along the Israel-Iran axis, security perils within the Eastern Mediterranean, and pressures upon regional energy corridors create a more expansive terrain of vulnerability.

Within this framework, Turkey’s posture assumes salience across three cardinal dimensions. In an environment of intensifying Israel-Iran tension, Turkey assumes an equilibrating function through its structural configuration of non-engagement with any single axis. Turkey’s position constitutes not neutrality but rather the consequence of autonomous balancing strategy. Ankara augments its capacity to generate stability through actions directed toward the attenuation of regional tension.

Turkey’s status as one of the rare actors capable of simultaneously conducting relations with Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Europe fortifies its potential to function as a diplomatic conduit during exigencies of crisis. This situation constitutes Turkey not merely as a belligerent faction but as an instrumental actor within crisis administration.

Should regional crises intensify, Turkey’s function transcends crisis administration alone. Within domains such as post-Gaza reconstruction, Eastern Mediterranean security, and regional energy matrices, Turkey’s order-constitutive capacity becomes progressively more conspicuous. This capacity is shaped through the faculty to generate stability rather than military force projection.

Negative Scenario: The Fracture of the Transition Period and the Reversion of the Security Cycle

Equally as the positive advancement of the extant transition period warrants analytical attention, the eventuality of this process encountering failure demands serious consideration. Transition periods constitute, after all, moments wherein vulnerabilities attain their apex. Should a scenario materialize wherein the complete liquidation of all Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) elements remains unaccomplished, integration in Syria becomes disrupted, and the northern frontier reopens to fragmentation and armed actors, such an eventuality signifies a multidimensional strategic retrogression.

Within such a scenario, the primary and most manifest risk comprises the re-engagement of the security cycle. Turkey would be constrained to administer risks once more that it has expended substantial resources to bring under control. This constitutes not merely a military and financial encumbrance; it simultaneously signifies the reconfinement of political energy within the security axis. Yet one must not overlook Turkey’s expertise in counter-terrorism and the expeditious identification of foreseeable risk domains—these remain amongst Turkey’s most cardinal strategic advantages within a security-prioritized positioning.

The second dimension of the negative scenario entails the reinstatement of Turkey’s strategic agenda to internal and external terror threats and frontier security. Capacity that would ordinarily be anticipated to redirect toward economic opening, regional integration, and infrastructure undertakings would undergo renewed concentration upon security topics. This circumstance, equally, would signify a region-wide reversion to uncertainty for the entirety of regional actors. Turkey’s cumulative experience in administering security problems emanating from instability in its proximate geography could yield more vigorous and constructive impact within such a scenario. The determinative issue at this juncture resides in the jeopardy that security becomes the singular defining agenda constituent. Since this would narrow Turkey’s multidimensional foreign policy and development aspirations.

The tertiary, and perhaps most consequential, dimension of the negative scenario consists in the re-emergence of regional politics into the ambit of great power competition. The American position within the region, Russian calculations in Syria, Iranian networks, and European security anxieties reconverge within the identical equation. Within such circumstances, regional actors’ autonomous room for maneuver diminishes, and actors may become compelled to position themselves within the competitive agendas of others rather than their own prerogatives. Consequently, this scenario could equally signify the forfeiture of strategic autonomy for Turkey.

Structural Metamorphosis in Turkey’s Security Perspective: From Military Security to Comprehensive Stability

When developments addressed herein are collectively evaluated, it becomes manifest that Turkey undergoes a qualitative, rather than merely quantitative, transformation in its security conception. This metamorphosis does not signify the complete excision of security from military apparatus. Conversely, military capacity remains acknowledged as requisite and instrumental; nevertheless, the reality that security can no longer be perpetuated through this capacity in isolation comes to the fore.

Within this context, transformation in Turkey’s security perspective crystallizes across three cardinal axes.

The first axis constitutes the inversion of security’s relationship with development. For extended periods, development had been construed as a consequence contingent upon the provision of security. Contemporaneously, development is becoming a domain wherein security itself is engendered. Economic integration, infrastructural undertakings, commercial corridors, and employment generation have transitioned from supplementary supports of security to essential constituents of security itself.

Economic and logistical projects taking configuration along the Turkey-Iraq-Syria-Gulf axis constitute practical instantiations of this metamorphosis. These endeavors not merely generate economic value; they simultaneously establish ground that attenuates conflict risks, engenders reciprocal dependence, and encourages stability.

The second axis constitutes the apprehension of security as a comprehensive conception. Energy security, food security, supply chain resilience, digital infrastructures, and diplomatic capacity have become determinative factors commensurate with military security. This means that security is no longer the sole responsibility of a single institution or policy domain.

Turkey’s recent policy trajectory evinces an approach that apprehends security in concert with its military, economic, and diplomatic dimensions. This methodology generates a preventive stability strategy oriented toward the forestalling of crisis emergence rather than reactive response to crises as they transpire.

The third axis comprises regional integration becoming not a subsidiary but a constitutive element of security. Economic axes centered upon Iraq and Syria, commercial relations elaborated with the Gulf, and initiatives toward the energy equation within the Eastern Mediterranean demonstrate that Turkey reconceptualizes security not exclusively through frontier fortification but through regional connectivity.

This approach endeavors to render security sustainable through the generation of reciprocal advantage rather than zero-sum competition. As regional integration deepens, the latitude available for security risks contracts.

Conclusion: Stability-Constitutive Capacity in Transition Periods and Turkey’s Position

The three-level analytical framework outlined in this piece offers a useful lens for understanding the security, foreign policy, and regional integration questions Turkey currently faces. Global-level order transition uncertainty encounters regional-level trajectories of state formation and centralization; at the internal tier, security undergoes reconceptualization through development and governance.

The emergent trajectory toward the termination of armed conflict in Turkey, when conjoined with integration and state formation endeavors in the Syrian arena, articulates a process that not merely attenuates Turkey’s security exposures but equally liberates its strategic capacity. This process fortifies Turkey’s internal stability, amplifies the regional diplomacy arena, and furnishes Ankara with a more autonomous space for maneuver.

Conversely, the materialization of the negative scenario harbors the jeopardy of drawing Turkey anew into a high-cost security cycle. Within such an eventuality, not merely military and economic expenditures would augment; Turkey would equally forfeit substantially the strategic acquisitions it might otherwise secure within the global transition period.

Israel’s assumption of a destabilizing function at the regional plane renders Turkey’s equilibrating, intermediary, and post-crisis order-constitutive capacity progressively more evident. Turkey’s posture is fashioned through the faculty to generate stability rather than military force projection.

In summation, Turkey, within the global and regional transition period in which we find ourselves, approaches security not within circumscribed military terms but as a multifaceted process inextricably interwoven with development, integration, and diplomacy. This methodology positions Turkey not merely as an actor administering risks but as an actor capable of engendering regional-level stability and possessing order-constitutive capacity.

The continuation, reinforcement, and institutionalization of the processes discussed herein emerge as a strategic imperative for Turkey’s long-term security and regional function.

/// Note: The analyses published on KSC’s website reflect the authors’ own views. These views are not necessarily aligned with KSC’s institutional approach.

Kadir Temiz is an international relations academic specializing in Chinese foreign policy, modern Chinese history, and Turkey-China relations. Serving as faculty at the Political Science Faculty International Relations Department of Istanbul Medeniyet University, Temiz is president of the Middle East Research Center (ORSAM). His analyses on China’s Middle East policy, the Belt and Road Initiative, and Turkey-China relations appear in the reports of various think tanks and various media outlets.