Geopolitical Briefing: Türkiye

— 21 September 2025

• 21 Sep: President Erdoğan set his UN General Assembly agenda to foreground Gaza “massacres,” seek wider recognition of Palestine, and meet U.S. counterparts on trade/defence—while also signalling prospective dialogue with Syria’s leadership in New York. (Reuters)
  
• 19 Sep: Baghdad–Erbil–Ankara edged toward a deal to restart Kurdistan oil exports via Türkiye’s Ceyhan line after an 18-month halt, with a draft revenue/marketing mechanism under SOMO. (Reuters)
  
• 14–15 Sep: Mass protests in Ankara challenged the judicial moves against the CHP; a court deferred a ruling on the party’s 2023 congress to 24 Oct, prolonging political uncertainty. (Reuters)
  
• Ongoing (this week’s readouts): Turkish messaging around Syria normalisation and security cooperation continued to surface across official and semi-official channels ahead of UNGA bilaterals. (Reuters)
  

President Erdoğan used his pre-UNGA media line to anchor Ankara’s week around three vectors: elevating Palestine on the New York stage with explicit language about Israeli “massacres”; leaning into pragmatic U.S. engagement on trade, investment and defence industry linkages; and trailing a meeting with Syria’s president on the margins—to consolidate Ankara’s influence over the post-war architecture next door. The choreography is deliberate: centre the Gaza file to rally Muslim and non-aligned states, keep channels with Washington warm to shape the terms of any corridor/technology deals, and fold Syria into a Turkish-steered process that constrains separatist militias and external patrons. As a package, the pre-summit signalling points to a foreign-policy cadence that marries moral authority on Gaza with transactional leverage in defence–industrial and transit domains, while tightening Ankara’s hand over Levantine diplomacy. (Reuters)

The Kirkuk–Ceyhan pipeline story—stalled since March 2023—moved materially on 19 September, with Reuters reporting that Baghdad, the KRG and producers are close to a restart framework routing sales through SOMO, allocating flows around 230,000 bpd for export and a slice for domestic use, with proceeds channelled via escrow. Second-line regional outlets corroborated this trajectory the same day. While arrears and arbitration overhangs remain, the draft formula reinscribes Türkiye as the indispensable outlet for northern Iraqi crude and a gatekeeper for regional energy monetisation. If finalised, it would thicken Ankara’s grip on East–West commodity corridors, strengthen its bargaining position with both Baghdad and Erbil, and bolster customs/transit receipts—resources that can be recycled into security and infrastructure statecraft. This week’s movement therefore sharpens Ankara’s leverage over strategic resources and the geography through which they move. (Reuters)

At home, tens of thousands rallied in Ankara on 14 September against a court case that could upend the CHP’s leadership by nullifying its 2023 congress; on 15 September the bench postponed a decision to 24 October. The standoff extends a months-long cycle in which legal scrutiny of opposition figures, including high-profile mayors, intersects with street mobilisation and market nerves. For the state, managing this contest without spillover into systemic instability preserves bandwidth for external files—Syria coordination, Black Sea navigation, energy corridors—yet any heavy-handed optics carry reputational costs in Western media narratives. The deferral buys time for procedural consolidation and message discipline; executed effectively, that time can reinforce Ankara’s domestic freedom of action for regional initiatives even as it narrows the avenues for hostile political interference cloaked as rule-of-law advocacy. (Reuters)

The UNGA setting also provides scope for parallel Syria tracks: Turkish readouts imply leader-level contact with Damascus’ new presidency and practical follow-through on security cooperation announced in August, now wrapped in summit diplomacy. In operational terms, Ankara’s aim is to translate statements about “One State, One Army” into border doctrine, logistics and training standards that displace militia autonomy and align Syria’s coercive instruments with Turkish security interests. If advanced in New York, such steps would embed Ankara deeper into Syria’s institutional reset, lower the transaction costs of cross-border trade arteries, and make it harder for extra-regional actors to impose vetoes on Levantine movement. Over time, expanded coordination with a neighbouring Muslim capital undercuts separatist safe havens and reduces third-party leverage over Syrian territory contiguous with Türkiye’s frontier. (Reuters)

The energy and summit strands converge on a broader corridor logic. A near-term resumption of Kurdistan exports through Ceyhan would restore volumes to Mediterranean markets via Turkish infrastructure just as Ankara courts investment into rail, ports and digital backbones. Simultaneously, a UNGA-level campaign that keeps Gaza central, coupled with enforcement steps already telegraphed against Israel-linked shipping and weaponized airspace use in prior weeks, signals to regional partners that trade flows relying on Turkish geography also come with political expectations. The week’s balance—pragmatic bargaining on energy and defence with major powers, emphatic solidarity on Gaza, and managed domestic contention—nudges the region toward an order in which Turkish preferences over access, overflight and customs shape outcomes more than external diktats. (Reuters)