Turkey has tried its best to stay out of the Iran war, studiously maintaining its neutrality. In this effort, it can point to precedent from its own history. Generations of Turkish policymakers cite the high-stakes balancing act Ankara performed during World War II as one of the golden chapters of Turkish diplomacy. At the time, Turkey’s leaders were acutely aware of the young republic’s geopolitical isolation and military vulnerability—and determined not to repeat the error of their Ottoman predecessors, who picked the wrong side in the previous world war, bringing about the collapse of the empire. As war raged at its borders, Turkey negotiated with both the Allies and Germany, and its ultimate achievement was preserving its neutrality despite the pressure of surrounding belligerents.

The war in Iran has required a similar calculation. Unlike in the 1930s and 1940s, Turkey today has sought a larger role on the world stage. The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the hands of Turkish-backed militant groups and other factions in late 2024 seemed to leave Ankara confident that it was becoming a more influential regional power. But Turkey does not yet possess the economic or military muscle to shape events on its own terms. Its relationships with major players in the region are delicate at best; it is still in the early stages of a reset with the United States, and its relations with Israel have soured considerably in recent years. Turkey remains dependent on others to defend its territory, too. Its 2019 purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system, which triggered U.S. sanctions and resulted in Turkey’s exclusion from critical NATO programs, made it harder for Turkey to maintain some of its sophisticated military hardware; it has not activated the S-400 system and lacks the air defense capabilities to shield itself fully from the Iranian ballistic missiles that began entering Turkish airspace in March. NATO interceptors, not Turkish weapons, took down the four Iranian missiles that targeted a NATO radar system and the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, where U.S. forces are stationed.

Nonetheless, Turkey has been keen to stay out of the fray. It hasn’t supported the U.S.-Israeli campaign, as some Gulf Arab states have, and it has not allowed the United States or Israel to use its airspace for strikes against Iran. That is because Turkey has a complicated but stable relationship with Iran that spans centuries. Although Iran is a historic rival, Ankara never wanted this war to start and spent the first months of 2026 helping lead regional efforts to persuade Tehran and the Trump administration to give nuclear talks one more chance. After all, a war across the border in Iran could send refugees flooding into Turkey, disrupt the country’s economy, and roil its domestic politics.

But much to Turkey’s chagrin, the United States and Israel did end up attacking Iran. Ankara is now doing its best to avoid getting sucked into the war’s vortex. But its posture of neutrality is unlikely to insulate Turkey from the unfavorable outcomes of the war. The conflict threatens Ankara in several ways: it could upset the uneasy balance in its relationship with Tehran, disrupt the Kurdish peace process underway at home, and leave Israel, Turkey’s top strategic rival, more dominant in the region than before. Ankara cannot control the course of the war, but merely avoiding conflict is no longer its best means of advancing its interests in a volatile neighborhood. It need not enter the war, but it should move proactively in several areas to ensure that it emerges from the current maelstrom not just unscathed but also in a stronger position.

Turkey has long chosen to manage frictions with an assertive Iran rather than confront its neighbor. The relationship between the two countries is one of neither friendship nor outright enmity, but a kind of competitive coexistence. This dynamic predated the founding of the modern republics. For centuries, the Ottoman and Safavid empires—the former the historic seat of Sunni imperial power, the latter the preeminent Shiite polity—competed for regional influence. After more than a century of on-and-off warfare, they established a modus vivendi through the 1639 Qasr-e Shirin agreement, delineating a frontier along the Zagros........

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