Turkey’s Foreign Minister has attacked global institutions over what he called “strategic resignation” and “abdication of agency” while conflicts rage in the region.
But Hakan Fidan promised his nation would not sit by as the “traditional mechanisms of global governance” – a reference to the UN and other blocs – “seem so ill-equipped” to address pressing issues.
“We're witnessing what feels like decades of geopolitical turbulence compressed into a few years,” he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies Raffles Lecture.
With wars in the Middle East and Europe alongside the Strait of Hormuz threat, he asked how prominent global actors were responding to the challenges.
“The answer to this question reveals one of the most troubling symptoms of our age – strategic resignation,” he told the audience in Singapore.
“Global institutions are increasingly paralysed and many actors continue to approach a changing world with obsolete assumptions. They remain unwilling or unable to leave comfort zones in which they have long operated on autopilot.”
He intensified the broadside on these institutions, asking if they were waiting “for stability to reappear in a form they recognise”, then stating their prevarication was “an abdication of agency at the very moment when it is most needed”.
Under the rigid rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has sought to become a leading regional power across the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Balkans, emphasising its “strategic autonomy” in pursuing its interests.
Mr Fidan, who led Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation before taking his current post in 2023, emphasised the country's growing aspirations and said “only a handful of wise and responsible nations have refused resignation – Turkey is one”.
Key to building stability was “diplomacy with agency” and using it as a tool to “wisely shape our collective future”.
“Turkey embodies a virtue that is in growing demand in international affairs and that is reliability,” Mr Fidan said. “We offer the assurance of a stabilising power in an increasingly unpredictable world.”
Hejaz rail revived
With the global economy fractured by Iran’s refusal to open the Strait of Hormuz following the US and Israeli attacks on the country, Mr Fidan disclosed new alternative trade routes were being examined.
These include the resurrection of rail links, replicating the Ottoman Empire's Hejaz line from Madinah to Damascus, through the Turkish network.
“We have started discussions with Saudi Arabia to revitalise the train road from here because we have good connection with Europe from Turkey, [and] to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf.”
Discussions over reviving the 1,300km railway have also been backed by Syria and Jordan, with planning to modernise what could be a vital overland logistics and passenger corridor connecting Europe and the Mediterranean directly to the Gulf.
The prospect of a continuous land route from southern Europe to the Arabian Gulf is viewed by Middle East governments as a crucial strategic bypass that offers a secure corridor, rather than the current instability of maritime routes.
Turkey has already agreed to rebuild a critical gap of 30km of missing rail track in Syria.
Iranian intervention
Turkey is also playing a role in Middle East diplomacy, with its links to Iran allowing it to help in mediation with Washington.
Mr Fidan said senior Iranian officials had called him after it appeared Israel was about to launch a major attack on Lebanon, which was called off at the last-minute, reportedly after US President Donald Trump’s intervention.
The Foreign Minister said the Iranians had complained the Israeli operation in Lebanon has “come to a point where we cannot actually tolerate this any longer, because it violates clearly the understanding that we reached with the Americans” for a ceasefire on all fronts.
“What Israel is doing in Lebanon is a clear violation of our understanding,” he said the Iranians told him. That message was understood to have been passed on to Washington.
Asked about the plans for Turkey’s Yildirimhan intercontinental ballistic missile programme that has a range of 6,000km, Mr Fidan said it was “concept work” for putting satellites in space.
He added: “Deterrence is a part of the defence strategy and when you look at the neighbourhood that we are in, you can easily assume that we really need deterrence.”
