Like many of the tens of thousands of Iranians living in Turkey, Ali was overjoyed when he heard the news of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.
“He’s gone to hell,” Ali said, asking that only his first name be published. “Little by little, Iran is being fixed.”
Others celebrated in the streets of cities such as Istanbul, seeing the supreme leader’s death as a route towards a different, better future for their homeland.
For leaders in Ankara, the news was less welcome.
“I am deeply saddened by the death of our neighbour Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, calling for a return to diplomacy in an attempt to steer the region towards some sort of stability.
That is not because Turkey’s leadership aligns with Iran's. The two countries have a precarious, pragmatic relationship: there are regional rivalries, including in post-Assad Syria, where Ankara’s influence has soared as Tehran’s has collapsed.
Turkey is suspicious of what it sees as its neighbour’s support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant group linked to Iranian proxies in Iraq and seen by Ankara as its number-one national security threat. At the same time, the two nations trade with each other and maintain diplomatic ties. Turkey imports natural gas from Iran and they share a 530km border. Both want it to remain stable.
Despite its differences with Iran, Ankara opposed foreign military intervention, especially one that came as the US and Iran were attempting to negotiate a new nuclear deal as recently as last Thursday. Turkey was part of that backdoor diplomacy: Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had held late-night phone calls with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, as well as with Oman, which was officially mediating the now-shelved nuclear negotiations.
With war having overtaken diplomacy, countries across the region, including Turkey, are confronted with a new balance of power. That includes an Israel appearing to seek regime change in Iran through gloves-are-off, brute military force, and a Tehran that burnt its bridges with its Gulf neighbours by attacking them in retaliation for the US and Israeli strikes.
Ankara’s reaction
Since war began on Saturday, Ankara has been seeking containment over a protracted military confrontation with unknown outcomes, analysts and officials say. Already surrounded by Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, it does not need another destabilised neighbour.
“Turkey does not want any conflict in the region,” a senior Turkish official told The National, on condition of anonymity. He described the US and Israeli attacks on Iran as “completely illegal and illegitimate”. Turkey is “not a party to these conflicts and is not pleased with them”, he added.
Ankara is also concerned about war, prompting large-scale flows of refugees. While such movements have yet to materialise, they would be deeply unpopular in a country already hosting millions of displaced people and struggling with years of economic difficulty. It wants to avoid a potential firing up of separatist ambitions among some groups in Iran, especially within its Kurdish population, which could endanger recent efforts in Turkey to dissolve and disarm the PKK.
While recent canvassing by the Ankara-based Metropoll centre found nearly 60 per cent of Turks want regime change in Iran, their leadership is more cautious. The killing of Mr Khamenei does not mean the immediate the end of the Islamic Republic: the process for choosing the supreme leader’s successor is already under way in Tehran and further instability is precisely what Ankara wanted to avoid.
For Turkey, “the stakes go far beyond normal risk management, since it sits right in the crossfire”, Sinem Cengiz, a researcher at Qatar University’s Gulf Studies Centre, told The National.
As well as condemning Mr Khamenei’s killing, Mr Erdogan said he was “deeply saddened and concerned by the American-Israeli attacks” on Iran, which he blamed the latter for instigating. Relations between Mr Erdogan's government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's in Israel have nosedived over the Gaza war.
Turkey believes that Israel is looking for regime change in Iran, so that the threats it sees there are "eliminated, completely, both for today and for the future," Hakan Fidan said on Monday.
By the same token, Ankara sees this current crisis as "part of Israel’s bid for regional hegemony,” Burcu Ozcelik, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, told The National.
“That framing is inherently problematic for Turkey, especially given the depth of friction in the bilateral relationship, which is now at an all-time low.”
Mr Erdogan also condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks across the Gulf as “unacceptable, regardless of the reason”. Ankara has been working in recent years to repair sometimes strained relations with Arab Gulf partners, and has made trade growth a priority.
Like others, Turkey sees attacks on oil, gas and shipping infrastructure in the Gulf as a way of disrupting energy markets, and as part of Iran's strategy in raising the cost of war for the US. "Iran will think that by bombing these areas, they will put pressure on America to stop the war, but that won't happen," Mr Fidan said.
Seeking de-escalation
Turkey is now seeking de-escalation as quickly as possible. Much like the frantic diplomacy taking place before the current conflict broke out, Ankara is talking to other decision-makers to attempt to minimise the chances of more regional spillover.
“Turkey is making every effort for peace and, primarily, a ceasefire,” the senior Turkish official told The National. “No results can be achieved as a result of these attacks. Diplomacy must be brought back into play.”
In the first two days of the war, Mr Erdogan confirmed he had spoken to US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Mr Fidan spoke to 15 other foreign ministers, including those from Iran, the UAE, Oman and Qatar. Calls “assessed steps that could be taken to end the attacks”, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official said.
With Iran having angered Gulf partners who once played key mediating roles with the West, Ankara is in a position to mediate between them, Ms Cengiz said.
“Turkey is now doing as it knows best: acting like a channel between parties, whether Iran and the US, or Iran and the Gulf monarchies,” she said. “I see Ankara’s role as very critical, particularly in this war, and this role is beyond just crisis management because the stakes are too high.”
But given the precedent of failures of diplomacy as recently as last week, there is no guarantee that such an exit route will emerge. “There are limits to what Ankara’s diplomatic overtures can achieve,” Ms Ozcelik said.
Why has Turkey avoided attack?
Nato member Turkey has so far also avoided the sort of retaliatory attacks from Iran that have hit the Gulf, despite the similarities in the countries’ pre-war positions: refusal to allow their airspace or territory to be used in US strikes against Iran, and seeking diplomacy and de-escalation. Incirlik airbase in the south-eastern Adana province is home to a US air force unit, as is a base in the western Izmir province, as part of a Nato mission. Turkey has the second-largest army in the alliance and is increasingly courted by Europe as part of its defence strategy against Russia.
A deliberate Iranian strike on Turkish territory, for example at Incirlik, would be “an escalation of a far greater magnitude”, said Ms Ozcelik.
“It would amount to a direct confrontation with a Nato member that has one of the Alliance’s largest militaries," she said. "That raises the risk of this tipping from a regional war into a far wider international crisis, not just rhetorically but operationally, because it would create immediate pressure for a collective Nato response and for Turkey to retaliate.”
Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte spoke to Mr Erdogan and said “we are always ready to deter and defend against any threat, from any direction”, without expanding.
Asked by journalists if Turkey is concerned about being attacked, Mr Fidan said the country, "will always defend itself. We have both the necessary will and the ability to do so."
An alternative risk for Turkey, Ms Ozcelik said, is that Iran attacks it indirectly, using cyber activity, sabotage, proxy-linked attacks in third countries, or incidents that affect Turkish shipping and energy routes.
Mr Erdogan has a solid relationship with US President Donald Trump and the direct criticism of the campaign in Iran is a departure from normally more cautious positions on Washington’s actions.
Whether Ankara will later align itself more firmly with Washington depends chiefly on the trajectory of escalation in the coming days, said Riccardo Gasco, foreign policy co-ordinator at IstanPol, an independent Istanbul-based think tank. “If Iran and Iranian-aligned proxies intensify attacks, Washington may seek deeper co-ordination with Turkey,” he told The National. That could come in the form of surveillance, early warning and situational awareness framed as assistance rather than direct involvement, he added.
What is unlikely is Turkey allowing the US to use its bases for striking Iran, by launching or landing planes at them, for instance.
“That would be a major political threshold for Ankara because it would potentially increase retaliation risks and domestic backlash, and undermine Turkey’s efforts to maintain a defensive, mediation-orientated posture,” he said.
Others see the prospect of Turkey getting involved as even less likely. “This is not Nato’s war: it is a US-Israeli war in which Turkey has neither responsibility nor interest, other than endorsing diplomacy to de-escalate it,” Ms Cengiz said. “I think Iran sees this clearly.”
Should threats emerge from neighbouring Iran in terms of activity by the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the PKK’s Iran wing, Turkey does have countermeasures available, analysts believe.
“Even if a broader Iran escalation creates a risk of PJAK or PKK-linked actors feeling emboldened, Turkey is not unprepared,” Mr Gasco said. “It has operational experience, a sustained cross-border security posture, and a well-developed intelligence and surveillance architecture that can be activated quickly if there are signs of movement, logistical build-up, or attempts to exploit the moment.”
