Ankara is winning applause on the Arab street. Yet when the real roles in Gaza were being assigned, Turkey’s chair proved unnecessary, and that episode explains the limits of Turkish ambitions better than any theory.
In 1908, the first train from Damascus arrived in Medina. The Hejaz Railway had taken eight years to build, financed by donations collected across the Islamic world, and Sultan Abdul Hamid II envisioned it as the steel backbone of the empire: pilgrims, troops, mail, and orders from Istanbul were supposed to reach the holy cities in a matter of days instead of taking more than a month by caravan. Ten years later, Bedouin units loyal to the Sharif of Mecca, operating alongside British officers, were systematically blowing up its tracks. The railway died together with the empire.
In June 2026, Turkey and Saudi Arabia signed memorandums on reviving it through Syria and Jordan, with the possibility of eventually extending the route to Oman. The symbolism of the agreement runs deeper than it may appear. The Ottoman railway is returning, except this time Riyadh is a co-owner that decides for itself where and when the trains will run.
This story contains the entire answer to a question being asked with increasing frequency across the Middle East: can Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has turned the defense of Palestine into a major source of his foreign-policy capital, become the leader of the Arab world? My position is simple. Turkey can become the most influential non-Arab power in the Arab geopolitical space. It will not lead that space. What stands in its way is not some mythical “eternal Arab hostility toward Turks.” Public opinion data disproves that myth. The obstacle lies elsewhere: there is no longer a single Arab world that anyone can lead.
Four Centuries Under the Crescent: A Memory Everyone Rewrote in Their Own Image
On August 24, 1516, the forces of Selim I defeated the Mamluks at Marj Dabiq north of Aleppo. Cairo fell in January 1517. For the next four centuries, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, the Hejaz, and much of North Africa were, in various forms, incorporated into Istanbul’s sphere.
Calling this structure a “Turkish colonial empire” is an anachronism. Seventeenth-century Damascus had a very different relationship with Istanbul from the relationship between nineteenth-century Algeria and Paris. Arabs served as judges, governors, officers, and tax collectors. Vast territories were administered by local dynasties, while a shared Islamic legitimacy bound the system together more effectively than garrisons did.
Nationalism began to fracture that system from both sides. After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the drive toward centralization and the promotion of the Turkish language in administration were perceived by part of the Arab intelligentsia as Turkification. World War I carried the conflict all the way to the gallows. Cemal Pasha, one of the triumvirs of the Young Turk regime and commander of the Fourth Army in Syria, ordered the execution of dozens of Arab activists. On the morning of May 6, 1916, hangings took place simultaneously in Beirut and Damascus. The Beirut square where those convicted were executed is still called Martyrs’ Square, and May 6 became Martyrs’ Day in Lebanon and Syria.
A month later, in June 1916, Sharif Hussein bin Ali raised the banner of revolt in Mecca. This is where mythology begins. Most Arabs in the empire did not participate in the uprising, and tens of thousands continued fighting in Ottoman uniforms until the end of the war. Yet two mirror-image narratives grew out of these events. The Turkish narrative tells of an Arab knife in the back, wielded at British direction. The Arab nationalist narrative speaks of four centuries of Turkish occupation. Both are more primitive than the historical reality, and both have proved remarkably durable.
Another grievance was added to the list, one that Turkey prefers not to remember. In 1939, France transferred the Sanjak of Alexandretta to Ankara, and it became Hatay Province. For decades, Syrian school maps continued to depict the territory as Syrian. For a Syrian state nationalist, the history of Turkish presence on Arab land did not end in 1918 at all.
Nasser Built a House With No Room for the Turks
After World War II, Arab nationalism became the principal language of regional politics. Turkey, at that moment, found itself on the other side of the barricade in every sense. In March 1949, it became the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel. Three years later, it joined NATO. In 1955, it became one of the founding members of the Baghdad Pact, which Cairo denounced as an instrument of Western control over the region. In the fall of 1957, Turkish troops massed near the Syrian border, and Damascus interpreted the move as preparation for an invasion at Washington’s behest.
After the Suez Crisis of 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser became the voice heard from Casablanca to Basra. On February 1, 1958, Egypt and Syria proclaimed the United Arab Republic. The logic of the project seemed unassailable: the Arabs constituted one nation, and the fate of that nation was to be determined by Arabs themselves.
Within such a structure, there was no place for Turkey by definition, whether in terms of language, identity, alliances, or historical memory. This creates the fundamental dividing line that must be kept in mind in any discussion of Turkish ambitions. Ankara can quite reasonably aspire to be one of the leading powers of the Islamic world. But any claim to leadership among the 22 members of the Arab League runs into a question for which there is no convenient answer: why should Arab states hand a mandate to a non-Arab country?
One Minute in Davos That Was Worth a Decade of Diplomacy
The paradox is that Erdogan came closer to crossing that barrier than any Turkish leader since the last sultans.
On January 29, 2009, during a World Economic Forum panel on Gaza, he clashed with Israeli President Shimon Peres, demanded “one minute” from the moderator, and walked off the stage. Crowds carrying flags greeted him in Istanbul. Arab television channels replayed the exchange for weeks: a Turkish leader had publicly told Israel what most Arab rulers had not dared to say even behind closed doors.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, which was sailing toward Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla. Nine Turkish citizens were killed, and a tenth later died of his wounds. Erdogan’s image as a defender of the Palestinians was now firmly established.
That symbolic capital rested on a solid material foundation. The Turkish economy was growing at rates that Europeans envied. The television series Noor attracted, by available estimates, tens of millions of Arab viewers in 2008, while Istanbul became a dream destination for the Arab middle class. Turkey was selling a model in which Islam, elections, markets, and a functioning state appeared capable of coexisting. To an Arab public weary of aging dictatorships, the display looked almost revelatory.
Betting on the Brotherhood: How Ankara Won 2011 and Lost Egypt
The Arab Spring opened a window for Ankara that Ahmet Davutoglu, then foreign minister and architect of the doctrine of “strategic depth,” regarded as historic. The calculation was straightforward. If moderate political Islamist forces ideologically close to the ruling Justice and Development Party replaced the overthrown regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria, Turkey would become the natural center of an enormous geopolitical space.
Egypt was the key. Mohamed Morsi’s victory in the 2012 presidential election raised the prospect of a Turkish-Egyptian tandem capable of reshaping the entire regional architecture.
On July 3, 2013, the Egyptian military removed Morsi from power. Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi became president a year later. Erdogan refused to recognize the change of government, publicly called Sisi a tyrant, and Istanbul became a refuge for Egyptian Islamist opposition groups with their own television channels. Relations collapsed.
The cost of that bet was recorded in annual surveys conducted by one of Istanbul’s leading research foundations. In 2011, 78 percent of respondents across 16 countries in the region viewed Turkey favorably. The figure fell to 69 percent in 2012 and 59 percent in 2013. Egypt’s trajectory looked like a collapse: 86 percent in 2011, 84 percent in 2012, and just 38 percent in 2013.
The lesson was harsh. Turkey’s appeal was enormous, but fragile, and depended above all on whom Ankara chose to support inside other countries.
Cairo: A Pride That Will Not Surrender Primacy
Egypt remains a fundamental obstacle to any Turkish claim to regional primacy. It has more than 107 million people, the Arab world’s largest military, Al-Azhar, and the historic center of Arab journalism, cinema, literature, and diplomacy. The Arab League was founded in Cairo in 1945, and except for the Tunis interlude from 1979 to 1990 following Camp David, its headquarters has remained there. Cairo has always regarded that as the natural order of things.
For the Egyptian state, Turkish sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood appeared to threaten the regime itself. The rivalry then acquired a military dimension. In November 2019, Ankara signed security and maritime-boundary memorandums with the government in Tripoli, and in January 2020 it sent military personnel and drones to Libya. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates supported Khalifa Haftar’s opposing camp. In the summer of 2020, Sisi publicly designated the Sirte-Jufra line as a red line beyond which the Egyptian military would intervene.
Reconciliation took almost a decade. On November 20, 2022, Erdogan and Sisi shook hands at the opening of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The two countries restored ambassadors in July 2023. On February 14, 2024, Erdogan flew to Cairo for the first time in 12 years, and on September 4 of that year Sisi made his first visit to Ankara as president, writing that the trip reflected a shared desire to open a new chapter of friendship and cooperation. The two sides set a goal of increasing bilateral trade from roughly $9 billion in 2024 to $15 billion.
Behind the diplomatic language lay a simple fact. Ankara stopped trying to change the Egyptian regime and began doing business with it. Cairo accepted Turkish investment, estimated by the Egyptian government at roughly $4 billion, and Turkish drones entered the negotiating agenda. Egypt surrendered not a millimeter of primacy.
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi: Rivals With Their Own Visions of Greatness
With Saudi Arabia, the competition exists on a level Turkey cannot fundamentally win. The Saudi monarch bears the title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Mecca and Medina give Riyadh a religious status that cannot be purchased or conquered. Every time Ankara speaks of leadership in the Sunni world, it enters a field of symbolic competition in which the Saudis begin with the strongest card already in their hands.
Mohammed bin Salman has added to the religious dimension an ambition to make Saudi Arabia the financial and technological center of the region. Relations between the two countries went through a profound crisis after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, while Turkish authorities spent months releasing details of the investigation in carefully measured installments. Erdogan traveled to Jeddah in April 2022, the crown prince visited Ankara in June, and in July 2023 Riyadh signed a contract with Turkish company Baykar for Akinci combat drones, a deal Ankara described as the largest defense export agreement in Turkey’s history.
Under Mohammed bin Zayed, the United Arab Emirates built a model of influence that was in many ways the opposite of Turkey’s: uncompromising hostility toward political Islam combined with an emphasis on capital, ports, and logistics. Emirati money supported Ankara’s adversaries from Cairo to Benghazi. The turn came in November 2021, when bin Zayed visited Ankara and announced a $10 billion investment fund for Turkey. By July 2023, the package of agreements between the two countries was valued at $50.7 billion.
Qatar is a separate case. During the blockade imposed on Doha on June 5, 2017, by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, the Turkish parliament fast-tracked authorization for additional troops to be deployed to the Turkish base in the emirate. Doha has not forgotten it. Yet an alliance with a state that itself pursues an autonomous media and mediation strategy makes Turkey a partner of one Arab center of power, not an arbiter standing above them.
Syria: A Turkish Victory That Had to Be Shared
The Syrian conflict permanently destroyed Turkey’s image as a power relying exclusively on soft power. Before 2011, Erdogan and Bashar al-Assad held joint cabinet meetings and vacationed with their families. After the uprising began, Ankara became the opposition’s main rear base. Then came Operation Euphrates Shield in 2016, Operation Olive Branch in Afrin in 2018, and Operation Peace Spring in October 2019. At the same time, since 2019 the Turkish military has conducted a series of Claw operations in northern Iraq, while dozens of Turkish military positions in Iraqi Kurdistan have long since become a permanent feature of the landscape.
Baghdad also has a grievance against Ankara that is rarely discussed in connection with Palestine: water. The Tigris and Euphrates originate in Turkey, and the chain of dams built under the Southeastern Anatolia Project gives Ankara leverage possessed by no Arab capital. When the filling of the Ilisu Dam reservoir began in the summer of 2018, the falling level of the Tigris near Baghdad triggered such an uproar in Iraq that Ankara had to postpone the process. For an Iraqi farmer in the south, Turkish influence is measured in cubic meters, not in Erdogan’s speeches about Gaza.
From Ankara’s perspective, this is about national security and the fight against the PKK. A substantial part of the Arab political establishment sees foreign soldiers on Arab soil. The same Turkey can appear as a defender in Gaza, a savior in Doha, an ally to an Egyptian Islamist, an enemy to an Egyptian security official, and an occupier to an Iraqi nationalist. There is simply no single Arab attitude toward Turkey.
On December 8, 2024, the Assad regime collapsed under the assault of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which had existed for years in Idlib under Turkish protection. Many rushed to declare Syria a Turkish protectorate. The reality proved more nuanced. Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was born in Riyadh, made Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination as president. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan arrived in Damascus on January 24, 2025, ahead of most of his counterparts. On February 7, 2026, the kingdom signed an investment package with Damascus worth approximately $5.3 billion, including the modernization of Aleppo’s airports and the creation of a Syrian-Saudi low-cost airline.
Turkish exports to Syria exceeded $3 billion in 2025, and in June 2026, Trade Minister Omer Bolat told the Gaziantep-Aleppo Economic Forum that the target was $5 billion in bilateral trade within two years. Those figures are substantial, but they are comparable to Saudi figures rather than overwhelming them. Al-Sharaa is pursuing his own balancing strategy among Washington, Ankara, Doha, and Riyadh, ruling out exclusive domination by any one power. The Israeli factor must also be added: on August 18, 2026, Israeli aircraft struck the Abu al-Duhur air base just hours after a Turkish delegation had left it. Syria has become an arena of influence for Ankara. It has not become a vassal.
The Numbers That Bury the Myth of “Eternal Hostility”
The claim that Arabs have historically rejected Turks falls apart under sociological scrutiny.
The 2025 Arab Opinion Index, the largest study of its kind in the region’s history, was based on 40,130 face-to-face interviews in 15 Arab countries, including the first survey of its kind in Syria after Assad’s fall. Turkey’s policy toward Palestine was viewed positively by 49 percent of respondents and negatively by 33 percent. By comparison, 76 percent viewed U.S. policy on the same issue negatively. In Jordan, according to the previous 2023-2024 wave of the Arab Barometer, 79 percent expressed a favorable view of Turkey, while 71 percent approved of Erdogan’s foreign policy.
Historical memory exists. It is not an ethnic barrier.
The latest data from Palestine, however, reveals a crack in Turkey’s foundation. The ninth wave of the Arab Barometer, conducted from October 8 to October 26, 2025, among a sample of 1,655 people in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, recorded a decline in favorable views of Turkey from 65 percent before October 7, 2023, to 51 percent. Iran rose from 28 percent to 42 percent over the same period, the strongest increase of any country. The authors of the study offered a direct explanation: Palestinians rewarded actors they believed had provided material support to the resistance and penalized mediators.
The internal Palestinian divide is enormous. In Gaza, 70 percent hold a positive view of Turkey; in the West Bank, the figure is 38 percent. Erdogan’s foreign policy is praised by 71 percent of Gaza residents and 43 percent of West Bank residents, and he still ranks first among foreign leaders. Yet the survey’s most important question concerned trust rather than sympathy: who can mediate fairly in a settlement? Egypt was named by 31 percent, Qatar by 30 percent, and Turkey by only 19 percent.
That is the formula of Turkey’s problem. Erdogan is popular. Even those who admire him do not give him a mandate.
Loud Words and Quiet Trade
The Arab street listens to the rhetoric and then checks the ledger. Turkey signed a free trade agreement with Israel in 1996, and it entered into force in 1997. In 2023, bilateral trade stood at roughly $6.8 billion to $7 billion, with Turkey among the leading suppliers of steel and cement to Israeli construction projects. Throughout that period, Erdogan called Benjamin Netanyahu a butcher and described Israel as a terrorist state.
The turn came late. In April 2024, Ankara banned exports of 1,019 products across 54 categories, and on May 2 it announced a complete suspension of trade. A year later, Israeli sources estimated that unofficial Turkish goods continued flowing through third countries at a rate of $100 million to $200 million per month, estimates rejected by the Turkish side. Establishing the truth is difficult, and it is more honest to acknowledge that each side has an interest in promoting its own figures. On August 29, 2025, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told an extraordinary session of parliament that Turkish ports had been closed to Israeli vessels and Turkish airspace to Israeli government aircraft and military cargo flights.
The hard line eventually became real. But Arab public opinion knows how to count the months, and it remembered the nearly seven-month gap between October 7 and the full embargo. Any power claiming moral leadership falls into the same trap: the louder the rhetoric, the more strictly it is judged by results.
Gaza: The Guarantor of Peace Who Was Left at the Door
The fall of 2025 was supposed to mark a Turkish triumph. On October 13 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Erdogan joined Donald Trump, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in signing a document formalizing the Gaza ceasefire under the U.S. 20-point plan. Turkey entered the circle of guarantors, formally on equal footing with Egypt and Qatar.
Then came the day-to-day reality, and Turkey’s status began to fade. On October 27 in Budapest, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said there would be no place for Turkish troops in the international stabilization force. In November, Israel refused to allow a team of Turkish rescuers into Gaza. A month later, Fidan acknowledged in an interview with a Turkish television channel that Ankara was prepared to participate in the stabilization force, while the Israelis were openly opposed.
The final outcome came on February 19, 2026, in Washington, at the inaugural meeting of the so-called Peace Council. Five Muslim-majority states formally committed troops to the international force: Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Morocco. Turkey was not on the list. The rebuilding of the Palestinian police was assigned to Egypt and Jordan. Ankara was left largely with logistics.
That episode is worth hundreds of opinion polls. When the real distribution of roles began, the American mediator relied on Gaza’s Arab neighbors, while Israel’s veto against Turkish troops carried more weight than the applause of the Arab street. Turkish rhetoric secured Erdogan a place in the photograph at Sharm el-Sheikh. The keys to Gaza remained in Cairo and Amman.
A Polycentric Middle East Is Not Looking for a New Sultan
Popularity and hegemony belong to different categories. A country can be loved by Jordanians and still have no control over decisions made in Amman. The idol of Gaza can remain outside negotiations over Gaza’s future. Reconciliation with Cairo is possible; compelling Cairo to acknowledge Ankara’s primacy is not.
The central point is that today’s Arab world is polycentric, and there is simply no vacancy for a “leader of the Arabs.” Saudi Arabia has the holy cities and the money. Egypt has demographics, a powerful military, Al-Azhar, and historical weight. The Emirates have capital and ports; Qatar has media and mediation. Each of these capitals jealously guards its sovereignty, and none needs either a new sultan or a new Nasser.
Ankara itself appears to have understood this before admitting it publicly. The Turkey of recent years is dramatically different from the Turkey of 2011. It has reconciled with Egypt, normalized relations with the UAE, signed defense agreements with Riyadh, and preserved its strategic alliance with Doha. Ideological messianism has given way to contracts for drones, construction, energy, and transportation. The Development Road project, worth approximately $17 billion, for which Turkey, Iraq, Qatar, and the UAE signed a memorandum in April 2024, is intended to connect Iraq’s Grand Faw Port with the Turkish border. The Hejaz Railway is being revived together with the Saudis. It is telling that both projects are being built in partnership with Arab capitals, not over their heads.
The South Caucasus shows what Turkish influence looks like when it rests on kinship and equality. The Shusha Declaration, signed on June 15, 2021, by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Erdogan, formalized allied relations between two sovereign states belonging to one nation. The formula “one nation, two states” works because it contains no senior and junior partner. In the Arab world, Ankara has neither that kinship nor partners willing to tolerate even a hint of hierarchy, which occasionally surfaces in Turkish rhetoric. That is where the limit lies.
Turkey’s advantages, however, are substantial, and underestimating them would be foolish. A population of more than 85 million. NATO’s second-largest military. A defense industry selling drones, armored vehicles, warships, and missiles from the Persian Gulf to North Africa. A transit hub connecting Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Television series and resorts that have long since become part of everyday Arab life. A leader whose name recognition across the region is rivaled by very few. And finally, Palestine gives Ankara the ability to address the Arab street over the heads of Arab governments.
All of this makes Turkey the most influential non-Arab power in the Arab geopolitical space. None of it makes Turkey the leader of that space.
I am prepared to offer a testable forecast. Through the end of 2027, Turkish troops will not enter Gaza as part of an international force, Ankara will not obtain an independent mediation role in the Palestinian settlement comparable to that of Egypt or Qatar, and its trade with Cairo and Riyadh will continue to grow. Turkey will make money in the Arab market while remaining outside the door behind which Arabs decide Arab affairs.
The Train to Medina
The Ottoman Empire governed the Arab East because an imperial pyramid existed, with Istanbul at its summit. In the twenty-first century, no such pyramid exists. In its place are sovereign states with their own militaries, sovereign wealth funds, elites, and grievances inherited from the past.
Erdogan appears to understand this distinction better than many of his admirers. His government signs a memorandum with Riyadh on a railway once used by the sultan’s trains and accepts that the route, tariffs, and final stations will be agreed upon by two capitals as equals. If, several years from now, a train from Istanbul finally reaches Medina, there will be no Turkish pasha waiting on the platform. There will be a Saudi border officer, calmly checking the visas of Turkish passengers.