It was feted as a military “first” and a return to the Imperial glories of the 16th century when the Ottoman navy, led by Admiral Hayreddin “Red Beard” Barbarossa, dominated the Black Sea and Mediterranean.
A one-tonne TB3 attack drone last month took off from a Turkish-made aircraft carrier and, after a short mission, landed safely on the flight deck — the first time a self-piloted vehicle had achieved such a feat anywhere, claimed Selçuk Bayraktar, chair of Baykar, Turkey’s largest drone company.
“Just as we once ruled the seas, you as descendants of Barbaros Hayreddin, have today . . . opened the doors to a new world,” he told the crew of TCG Anadolu.
Nato member Turkey’s military is on a roll — just as Europe seems willing to overlook the latest democratic backsliding by its strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan because it needs a well-armed ally to protect its south-eastern flank from Russian revanchism.
“It has become clear that European security cannot be thought of without Turkey . . . especially with its defence industry,” Erdoğan said last month, weeks after the arrest of his main opposition rival Ekrem İmamoğlu triggered mass street protests and financial turmoil, but little public rebuke from the west.
Turkey and Europe have long talked at cross-purposes, with accession talks with the EU frozen for six years. Yet now, given Trump’s dismissive attitude towards Nato and apparent lack of concern for European security, Turkey’s role “as a country condemned to strategic significance” means a closer partnership with the bloc is inevitable, a western diplomat said.
Underscoring Turkey’s growing military and diplomatic clout, Erdoğan offered to host a three-way meeting in Istanbul on Thursday between the US, Ukrainian and Russian presidents.
The meeting may never happen. But Erdoğan is one of the few world leaders able to offer to host it. He has good relations with US President Donald Trump and — as part of what Erdoğan has called a “balanced” approach to the Ukraine conflict — Turkey has also maintained trade and diplomatic relations with Moscow despite providing military supplies to Kyiv.
Turkey’s military weight, which Erdoğan sees as a way to reopen EU membership talks, is inarguable. Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister and former spy chief, is now regularly invited to EU defence gatherings. Nato foreign ministers will also gather in Turkey on Wednesday for a long-scheduled meeting.
“There is an appetite to engage closer [with Ankara] . . . and to open up some more processes and channels,” said one European official, in a sign of the changing times.
Turkey’s navy controls shipping lanes into and around the Black Sea, while at 355,000 active personnel, its armed forces are Nato’s largest on the alliance’s European side.
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While Europe has struggled to put together a reassurance force for Ukraine of perhaps 30,000 troops, the Turkish military — structured for national defence but with expeditionary experience after recent deployments to Libya and Somalia — could quickly assemble an effective peacekeeping operation, should it agree to join any such scheme.
“The Turks know how to use force, and are not afraid to take casualties,” one western security official said. “Their counter-insurgency operations are good, and they have used drones in a way directly applicable to any surveillance operation in Ukraine.”
Turkey’s defence industry is also booming. While European countries strives to supply Ukraine and replenish their depleted defence stocks, Turkish armoured vehicles, warships, drones and munitions are rolling off factory production lines, built mostly with Turkish-made parts.
State-owned defence contractors STM and ASFAT are making corvette warships for Ukraine. Privately held Repkon has built 155mm artillery shell production lines in the US and Germany. First deliveries to the Turkish air force of a fifth-generation fighter jet, the Kaan, are scheduled for 2028 by state-owned TAI.
More immediately Baykar, which supplied drones to Ukraine at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, recently sealed a joint venture with Italian defence company Leonardo. The move could help it sell to Europe’s fast-growing drone market, alongside its current customers in the Middle East. Bayraktar, a 45-year-old MIT graduate, is Erdogan’s son-in-law.
Drone warfare and sophisticated signals intelligence were also instrumental in the Turkish military’s ferocious counter-insurgency operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, the militant group which agreed to lay down its arms this week and embark on a potentially historic peace process.
“Europe seem to be anticipating €800bn of defence spending and . . . Turkey is one of the few countries that can help,” Turkish finance minister Mehmet Şimşek told the Financial Times last month, adding that international arms sales were “up dramatically” from last year’s $7.2bn of exports.
“Europe’s relations with Turkey in the past were partly about EU accession and infused with issues such as the rule of law. Now it’s all about geopolitics,” said Galip Dalay, a senior consulting fellow at the Chatham House think-tank. “But there are still mutual dependencies, and mutual needs . . . European security is Turkish security too.”
A ceasefire in Ukraine, for example, could lead to Russia rebuilding its presence in Crimea, projecting military power again across the Black Sea and into the eastern Mediterranean.
“Strategically, the status quo has suited Turkey in many ways,” said Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King’s College London. “A stronger Russia in the Black Sea and across the Caucasus, would be a challenge for Europe and for Turkey.”
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Turkey also needs Europe to sustain its defence industry, a bright spot in its faltering economy.
“Turkey is trying to tell Europe: ‘Look at what we can do, and how well we can do it,’” said Tom Waldwyn, a defence procurement specialist at the International institute for Strategic Studies in London, which has published a series of reports on the Turkish defence industry.
“But its industry faces sustainability issues, lacks capital, is trying to do too much, and suffers from brain drain. It needs Europe too,” he added.
The EU-Turkey relationship has long been fraught with cynicism and doubletalk on both sides. Today, Europe’s need for Turkey’s military may again override concerns about Erdogan’s “push towards a full authoritarian model”, as the European parliament stated last week. Yet not to the extent that it reopens accession, EU officials insist.
The relationship between security and domestic politics is also nuanced. Ten days after his arrest, Istanbul’s mayor İmamoğlu — who polls suggest would beat Erdoğan in a presidential election — implored Germany not to block the long-mooted sale of Eurofighter jets to Turkey because of his detention, arguing the national interest was more important.
“I beg you to retract this decision. Turkey is not just about Erdoğan, Turkey is bigger than Erdoğan. Governments come and go,” Imamoglu wrote on X from jail, adding for good measure, if hopefully: “The end of Erdogan’s rule is in sight.”