Geopolitical Briefing: Türkiye

— 10 September 2025

• 9 Sep: Ankara condemned Israel’s strike on Hamas figures in Doha and pledged solidarity with Qatar; President Erdoğan held a phone call with Emir Sheikh Tamim to coordinate responses. (Reuters, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, iletisim.gov.tr)
  
• 8 Sep: The government published its Medium-Term Programme (MTP), resetting macro targets (inflation 28.5% for 2025; single digits in 2027) and a growth path toward 5% by 2028. (Reuters)
  
• 3 Sep: TÜİK released August CPI at 32.95% y/y and 2.04% m/m, marking a further, if modest, disinflation step ahead of the 11 September rate meeting. (data.tuik.gov.tr)
  
• 8 Sep: Police used pepper spray while enforcing a court order at the CHP’s Istanbul headquarters, escalating a dispute over party control and drawing national attention. (Reuters, AP News)
  

Ankara’s reaction to the Doha strike was immediate and layered. The Foreign Ministry denounced the attack as evidence that Israel has “adopted terrorism as state policy,” and Erdoğan publicly framed it as a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty and of international law; in parallel, he spoke directly with Emir Sheikh Tamim to signal operational support and coordination. The diplomatic signalling serves three functions: it shores up Qatar’s mediation role after a shock to its credibility; it positions Türkiye as guarantor-advocate for a fellow Muslim state hosting active negotiation channels; and it normalises the idea that regional airspace and logistics regimes can be leveraged to deter further attacks that endanger talks. Ankara’s explicit alignment with Doha, delivered at head-of-state and ministerial levels on 9 September, therefore both consolidates leadership inside key Muslim partnerships and heightens the reputational and logistical costs borne by Israel for widening the conflict beyond Palestine’s borders. (Reuters, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Anadolu Ajansı)

The Medium-Term Programme published on 8 September in the Official Gazette gives investors and domestic constituencies a clearer glidepath after eighteen months of balance-sheet repair. The MTP sets 28.5% inflation for 2025, 16% for 2026 and single digits in 2027, with growth recovering from 3.3% (2025) to 5% (2028) and exports targeted above $308bn by programme end. The document implies continued orthodoxy—maintaining a floating exchange rate and prioritising disinflation—while reserving fiscal space for reconstruction and technology-infrastructure upgrades that underpin Türkiye’s broader trade-corridor ambition. By fixing a dated, state-backed path for disinflation and growth, Ankara reduces policy uncertainty that external creditors often translate into pricing power, strengthens domestic control over capital deployment into ports, rail and telecoms, and improves its ability to set terms in regional supply-chain projects without conceding to outside conditionality. (Reuters, Anadolu Ajansı)

The August CPI print on 3 September showed 32.95% year-on-year and 2.04% month-on-month, consistent with a slow disinflation trend but still hot in services and food. Markets treated the release as restrictive for the pace of easing, with sell-side houses trimming forecasts for the 11 September rate cut; that immediate repricing is itself a concrete consequence of the data’s credibility and the central bank’s signalling. For Ankara’s geoeconomic posture, every tenth-point retreat in inflation widens the feasibility of lira-denominated contracting along Turkish-centred corridors and reduces the need for ad hoc fiscal props that historically exposed policy to dollar-market vetoes. The print therefore incrementally expands room to negotiate transit, energy and defence offsets on financial terms set in Ankara, while aligning domestic price dynamics with the state’s objective of anchoring East–West logistics in and through Türkiye. (data.tuik.gov.tr, Reuters)

On 8 September, domestic political tension escalated when riot police entered the CHP’s Istanbul headquarters to enforce a court order concerning provincial leadership, deploying pepper spray as party officials and lawmakers resisted. The standoff, following a weekend of barricades and calls for rallies, underscores a muscular approach to opposition management ahead of key judicial milestones. For external observers this is more than a police-procedural story: sustained legal-administrative pressure on a major opposition force shrinks the space for external narrative leverage over Türkiye’s democratic credentials, even as it risks periodic volatility. By signalling the primacy of order and continuity in the largest metropolitan arena, Ankara asserts control over the information and mobilisation environment at home, thereby allocating more bandwidth to regional security files—from Syria policy coordination to maritime risk—under a domestically consolidated centre. (Reuters, AP News)

Pairing the week’s foreign-policy messaging with its economic signalling, Ankara is effectively re-coupling sovereignty in the diplomatic and financial domains. The Qatar coordination on 9 September signals to Arab capitals that Türkiye will translate rhetoric into protective alignment when core mediation architectures are attacked; the 8 September MTP, conversely, assures markets and partners that Ankara can fund that posture without returning to destabilising monetary experiments. As a package, these moves aim to keep regional negotiation venues open under Muslim stewardship while enabling Türkiye to price and police the trade arteries that run through its ports, airspace and data networks. That combination modestly de-risks reliance on Western gatekeepers in finance and media, and makes it costlier for Israel to externalise the burdens of its military campaign onto neighbouring states’ transit systems. (Reuters)

The week’s chronology also matters for resource allocation. The inflation release on 3 September and the MTP on 8 September jointly define the fiscal-monetary canvas on which ministries will draw for the rest of the year: reconstruction outlays, customs modernisation, spectrum policy and free-zone incentives are now constrained by a coherent plan that tightens scrutiny of off-balance sheet commitments. That coherence increases the odds that regulatory tools—port master directives, air navigation notices, customs IT—can be funded and enforced consistently, rather than episodically. In practice, that means Türkiye can better staff and standardise the very gatekeeping functions that turn geography into durable leverage over Mediterranean and Black Sea flows, while reducing the opacity that outsiders have historically used to challenge domestic policy choices. (data.tuik.gov.tr, Reuters)

Finally, the Doha episode provides Ankara with a fresh legal-political basis to rally regional blocs around sovereignty and civilian protection as organising principles. By condemning the attack during active talks and urging international pressure in line with Qatar’s statements, Türkiye links its own border-security priorities to a wider coalition logic: mediation platforms hosted by Muslim partners must be insulated from coercive sabotage. The sharper language from the Presidency and MFA, delivered on 9 September, fits a broader pattern of using public law arguments to reshape diplomatic costs for states that seek to extend conflict into the diplomatic arena. That stance reduces room for adversarial influence in international fora, strengthens ties with Muslim mediators, and reinforces a regional order in which Turkish preferences over access, overflight and customs standards carry increasing weight. (Reuters, Ministry of Foreign Affairs)