What is Driving Turkey's Foreign and Security Policy Agenda?

As the Middle East is facing grave uncertainty against the backdrop of what is being called the 'Third Gulf War', Ankara is managing an uneasy relationship with Iran. Turkey is projecting itself as a more consequential regional actor across a variety of regional security spaces and is often described as a 'middle power'. In this episode of Global Security Briefing, Dr Neil Melvin is joined by Dr Burcu Ozcelik, RUSI Senior Research Fellow, to analyse Turkey's relationship with Iran and the main limits of Turkey's regional approach to diplomacy. This episode explores: · How Turkey approaches peacebuilding in the Middle East. · What Turkey's regional role is across different theatres in the Caucasus, Somalia and Iran. · The limits of eastern Mediterranean security architecture that excludes Turkey. · What British and European policymakers should learn from Turkey's approach to diplomacy. This podcast episode is part of a policy series for the ' Turkey's Peacebuilding in a Disordered Middle East ' project of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) network. The Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin is funded by Stiftung Mercator and the Federal Foreign Office. CATS is the curator of the CATS Network, an international network of think-tanks and research institutions working on Turkey.

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What is Driving Turkey's Foreign and Security Policy Agenda? is an episode from Global Security Briefing by The Royal United Services Institute.

This episode is 48:55 long.

This episode was published on Mar 25, 2026.

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