Turkey (Türkiye)
TR · Southeast Europe / West Asia · NATO member since 1952 · EU candidate state
Turkey occupies one of the most strategically significant positions in the international system: a NATO member that controls the Turkish Straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) — the only maritime passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean — while simultaneously pursuing close ties with Russia, purchasing Russian air defence systems, and vetoing NATO consensus on multiple occasions. This multi-directional foreign policy, often called “strategic autonomy” or “active neutrality,” makes Turkey simultaneously indispensable and unreliable to the Western alliance.
Under President Erdoğan (in power since 2003 as PM, 2014 as President), Turkey has moved from a broadly pro-Western orientation toward a more independent posture that leverages its strategic position to extract concessions from multiple great powers simultaneously.
Turkey is a NATO member whose Incirlik Air Base hosts approximately 50 US B61 nuclear bombs under NATO nuclear sharing arrangements (FAS, 2024). Turkey has the second-largest standing army in NATO by personnel. Despite NATO membership, Turkey purchased the Russian S-400 air defence system in 2017–2019, triggering its removal from the F-35 programme by the US and sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Turkey has been an EU candidate state since 1999; accession negotiations are effectively frozen.
Turkey’s defence budget has expanded significantly, reaching approximately $51.4 billion (2.15 trillion lira) when combining the national defence allocation and the Defence Industry Support Fund — equivalent to between 2.1% and 2.33% of GDP (Defence News, 2026; Turdef, 2026). Active military personnel number approximately 481,000 including the Gendarmerie — the second-largest active force in NATO after the United States (Turkish Armed Forces, 2025). Turkey has developed a significant domestic defence industry, notably the Bayraktar TB2 drone, which proved decisive in conflicts in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh (2020), and Ukraine. It is a non-nuclear state under the NPT but participates in NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement.
Greece: Turkey and Greece, both NATO members, have overlapping claims in the Aegean Sea over continental shelf rights, airspace, and the status of certain islands. Military incidents are periodic. The dispute over Cyprus — where Turkish forces have occupied the north since 1974 — remains unresolved.
Kurdish issue: Turkey designates the Kurdish PKK as a terrorist organisation and has conducted military operations in northern Syria and Iraq against Kurdish forces (YPG/SDF) that the US has supported against ISIS. This created a major bilateral tension with Washington.
Sweden’s NATO accession: Turkey delayed Sweden’s NATO membership for over a year (2022–2024), citing Swedish support for Kurdish groups and arms export restrictions. It ultimately approved membership in February 2024 after receiving commitments on extraditions.
S-400 and F-35: Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system led to its exclusion from the F-35 programme and US sanctions. The dispute remains unresolved and is a central fault line in the US-Turkey relationship.
Turkey is studied as the paradigm case of a “swing state” or “pivotal state” — a country whose alignment matters enormously to multiple great powers, giving it leverage that far exceeds what its raw power would suggest. Erdoğan’s foreign policy is often characterised as “neo-Ottoman” — reasserting Turkish influence in the former Ottoman sphere across the Middle East, Balkans, and Central Asia — though this framing is contested. The S-400 episode is a textbook case of the tension between alliance commitments and strategic hedging.
- 1NATO, Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2024) — nato.int
- 2Federation of American Scientists, Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe (Turkey) — fas.org
- 3US Department of State, CAATSA Sanctions on Turkey — state.gov
- 4NATO, Sweden Becomes 32nd NATO Ally, March 2024 — nato.int
- 5IMF, World Economic Outlook Database 2024 — imf.org