Real Clear World - .By Sinan Ciddi and Ahmad Sharawi - Turkey’s Mission to Put an End to the Iran War AP - March 24, 2026

 Real Clear World

.By Sinan Ciddi and Ahmad Sharawi

Turkey’s Mission to Put an End to the Iran WarAP

 March 24, 2026

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan did not mince words as he toured the Middle East as the war in the region escalated: “It should be especially noted that the primary responsible party for this war, which has drawn our region into an unprecedented crisis, is Israel.” The statement is the clearest articulation yet of Ankara’s effort to position itself as both a critic of the conflict and a broker seeking to end it.

Turkey, a strategic ally of the United States and a member of NATO has thus far avoided drawing the ire of Iran’s regime, despite sharing a 350-mile border with the Islamic Republic. Since the beginning of the war on February 28, unlike other U.S. allies in the Middle East, mostly Gulf Arab states, which have been targeted by Iranian missiles and drone attacks, Turkey has been mostly spared. Hitherto, Iran is assumed to have targeted Turkey with three missile attacks, and all three attempts were neutralized by NATO interceptors, preventing them making landfall.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been emphatic, declaring that Turkey has no desire to be drawn into the war. Instead, he is determined to play a role in ending it. Erdogan’s strategy to end the Iran war is based on a portraying Turkey as an advocate of regional peace, and a goal to depict Israel as a warmonger by accusing Jerusalem for manipulating the United States into attacking Tehran. An abstract aspiration for regional peace for ending the Iran war is low on Erdogan’s list of calculated list of motivations.

There is no doubt that the Iran war is straining the fundamentals of Turkey’s economy. For every $10 a barrel of oil goes up in price, adds a an estimated $3 to $5.1 billion to the country’s current account deficit. The inflationary pressure that Turkey is facing is potentially catastrophic. For a country, which already runs one of the world’s highest inflation levels, presently hovering over 30 per cent annually, pressure is intensifying on the Erdogan government to halt consumer price increases. There was already widespread resentment and dissatisfaction with the Turkish government prior to the start of the war. The longer the war continues, the more the regime in Ankara fears public anger beginning to boil over into public protests.

The last thing that Erdogan wants to confront in 2026 is public protests. Ankara interprets this risk as a dangerous potential spillover from the Iran conflict into Turkey –– something which it is desperate to avoid. Erdogan is leaving no stone unturned to seek re-election for a fourth term. He is not up for re-election until May 2028, but he has spent the last twelve months exploring avenues to move the election date forward, if it is opportune. Rising consumer prices inside Turkey are not going to help Erdogan’s election bid, especially at a time when most Turks are struggling to pay rent and purchase basic groceries.  

Erdogan’s political and economic spillover calculus also considers the risk of potential Iranian refugee flows into Turkey. After accommodating four million Syrians during the Syrian civil war, the vast majority who are still in Turkey, there is no public appetite to host more refugees. With these considerations in mind Hakan Fidan has hit the road, hoping to build pressure and momentum among the Muslim world, to pressure Washington and Jerusalem to end the war. But these are not the only reasons Erdogan wants to end the war.

Ankara’s primary concern is not just the risk of domestic instability, but the specific pathways through which the conflict could evolve, particularly those that would empower Kurdish actors along its borders. Recent reporting that Washington and Jerusalem considered leveraging Iranian Kurdish groups as a potential ground component against Tehran appears to have triggered significant concern in Ankara. Turkish officials have reportedly pushed back against this option, and, for now, seem to have succeeded as the  U.S. decided to sideline it.

This outcome, however, is contingent on the conflict remaining limited in scope and duration. A protracted war, especially one that fails to achieve its objectives through airpower and stand-off capabilities alone—would likely force the United States and Israel to revisit alternative strategies. In such scenario, the search for a capable ground partner inside Iran would become more urgent. Kurdish groups could be presented again as one of the most viable options.

For Turkey, this becomes a strategic threat. Ankara’s experience in Syria and Iraq has been defined by its opposition to U.S. partnerships with some Kurdish armed groups, which it views as extensions or affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group that has fought in an insurgency with Turkey for decades. The prospect of a similar model emerging inside Iran—particularly one that could produce a durable autonomous Kurdish entity would represent a significant escalation of that challenge and Turkish signaling has already reflected this concern, including discussions of potential cross-border buffer zones extending into Iranian territory.

Turkish policymakers appear to assess that the manner in which the war ends may be more consequential than the fact of Iranian weakness itself. The collapse of the Iranian regime, if driven in part by Kurdish forces, could catalyze broader Kurdish political mobilization across the region. From Ankara’s perspective, this would risk replicating and potentially amplifying the dynamics that emerged in northeastern Syria after 2014, with the U.S. allying with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to fight against the Islamic State, Turkey sought to contain it through repeated military interventions.

 Turkey’s diplomatic push to end the Iran war is therefore less about peacemaking than about preempting a convergence of threats—economic collapse, domestic unrest, refugee flows, and the reemergence of Kurdish autonomy movements along its borders. For Ankara, the urgency lies not only in stopping the war, but in shaping its outcome to ensure that Iran’s weakening does not translate into a strategic setback for Turkey itself.

Sinan Ciddi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and director of the Turkey program. Ahmad Sharawi is a senior research analyst at FDD.