TURKEYTurkey: The Threat of the Neo-Ottoman Caliphate to Regional Security
Turkey is swiftly expanding its influence in a rapidly imploding Islamic world, as its ‘neo-Ottoman’ president is whipping up a new wave of Islamism across continents. The country is even intervening in South Asia now, by forging defense deals with Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Turkey has been a major beneficiary of the recent wars in Ukraine and Gaza and appears to be sitting pretty in a conflicted neighborhood, with a weakened Russia, a beleaguered Europe, a distraught Israel and a defeated Iran. Turkey is going full steam ahead with its ‘neo-Ottoman’ designs. Straddling two continents, Turkey is a NATO member that wants to join the rival BRICS and SCO blocs as it thinks it holds both benefic and baneful cards in high stakes global geopolitics.
For a long time, Ankara’s neighbors had mistakenly assumed that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the so-called “neo-Ottoman” sultan or caliph, would be imminently removed from power by the secular and democratic forces within his country. That has not happened, as the septuagenarian has turned Turkey’s parliamentary system into a near-authoritarian presidential one, and is now well entrenched to take advantage of the floundering geopolitical order in West Asia, Africa and Eurasia.
Growing Military Footprint
By stepping into the vacuum created by a rapidly imploding Muslim world, Turkey is projecting the lore of its Ottoman past, a pan-Islamic caliphate based in Istanbul (1299–1922 CE), which lasted for over half a millennium. However, neo-Ottomanism is not just a soft power projection, as Turkey’s military has formally shifted its supposedly defensive orientation into an openly expeditionary one.
With about 800,000 active and reservist armed forces personnel in 2011,[1] Turkish troops are today stationed in at least 11 foreign countries—namely in Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Northern Cyprus, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Azerbaijan.[2] Just last year, it signed major security and military deals with four countries—Iraq,[3] Somalia,[4] Bulgaria and Romania.[5] More importantly, Turkey has initiated new defense deals with Pakistan[6] and Bangladesh[7] in January 2025 (discussed later in this brief).
In addition to boots on the ground, the country has extended its naval presence from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea and from the Horn of Africa to the Persian Gulf.[8] In fact, Turkey is also becoming one of the world’s major arms exporters, selling weapons and its vaunted Bayraktar drones from Ethiopia to Ukraine.[9]
