France 24, June 25, 2025
“Turmoil in Iran could also harm Ankara’s efforts to draw a line under its decades-long conflict with the PKK, which last month said it would disarm.”
Hours after US President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met him for talks on the sidelines of a NATO summit for their third conversation in 10 days.
Erdogan’s “intensive diplomatic efforts” to curb the conflict also involved calls with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian and top Middle Eastern leaders.
“Turkey has been trying very hard to de-escalate the situation, but it’s not seen as a credible mediator, neither by Iran nor by Israel,” Gonul Tol of the Washington-based Middle East Institute told AFP.
Turkey’s ties with Israel have been shattered by the Gaza war and Iranians see Ankara as complicit “because it hosts this strategic radar”, she said of a NATO early-warning system at Kurecik base in eastern Turkey that can detect Iranian missile launches.
Turkey has categorically denied radar data was used to help Israel but its presence has rattled Iran — with several Iranian military officials warning it could be “the first target” in case of a wider war, she said.
Even so, Erdogan reportedly sought to set up US-Iran talks in Istanbul last week, which only failed because Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — in hiding due to assassination threats — couldn’t be reached to approve it, the Axios news site said.
Unsettled by the long arm of Israel’s reach, Erdogan upped Turkey’s deterrence, ordering the defence industry to increase production of medium and long-range missiles. warning Ankara was “making preparations for every kind of scenario”.
“Concerns about a possible Turkish-Israeli confrontation in the short term seem exaggerated… (but) both would be wise to reduce tensions,” said Gallia Lindenstrauss, senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). …SOURCE