Cem Tuna Aksu

As Europe starts taking on more of its own defense burden, and transport routes across the Caucasus and Middle East get reshaped, Türkiye stands out not just for its geography, but for its ability to connect different security and connectivity systems to each other.

The United States isn’t pulling out of the global system — but it’s changing the shape of its presence in it. Washington’s recent approach isn’t about taking equal, direct military responsibility in every crisis zone; instead it relies on strengthening allies who can carry regional weight, managing the balance between these actors, and protecting its influence over key transport, energy, and defense networks. This isn’t a clearly announced, fully worked-out doctrine yet. Still, when you look at developments from Europe to the Black Sea, from the South Caucasus to the Middle East together, a pretty clear pattern shows up.

In this new setup, Türkiye’s importance doesn’t just come from being on NATO’s southeastern flank. Ankara sits right where Europe’s changing defense structure meets the new corridors that aim to connect the Gulf, Iraq, the Caucasus, and Central Asia to European markets. The fact that political messages from Washington, Berlin, and Yerevan all got softer around the same time shows that this structural value is spilling over into diplomacy too. So this isn’t just Türkiye being called a “bridge country” again. The real change is that Ankara is becoming a point where different regional systems actually touch each other.

EUROPE’S NEW DEFENSE BACKBONE

After the Cold War ended, European security depended largely on American military presence and the strategic guarantee Washington provided. Russia’s war on Ukraine exposed how fragile this setup was; the Trump administration’s pressure for Europe to take more responsibility for its own defense sped the change up. European countries didn’t just raise their defense budgets — the continent’s military centers of gravity started shifting too.

Poland carries this shift most clearly in the east. Warsaw pushed defense spending above 4% of GDP, aiming not just to be the frontline state against the Russian threat, but to become the leading military power in Central and Eastern Europe. More importantly, this isn’t just one government’s choice — strong public support for defense spending in Poland shows this positioning has a real base in domestic politics.

In the west, Germany’s transformation stands out. Berlin’s long-standing balance between economic power and military caution stopped being sustainable after the Ukraine war. According to SIPRI’s 2025 figures, Germany’s military spending rose 24% in a single year to reach $114 billion, making it the world’s fourth-biggest defense spender. The fiscal plan that projects further budget growth in coming years suggests this isn’t a short-term reaction, but a long-term choice tied to rebuilding European security.

So Poland and Germany have become two separate but complementary pillars of European security: Poland stands for military deterrence on the eastern flank, Germany stands for financial, technological, and industrial capacity at the continent’s core. That said, it would be misleading to read this picture as something Washington designed from the top down. The more accurate reading is that American pressure, the Russian threat, and NATO’s newly agreed spending targets combined with national choices to push these two countries forward. The US here acts less like an architect and more like a force that speeds up and steers the process.

THE NEW LIMITS OF ALLIANCE

The new American approach isn’t just about sharing the burden — it’s also about political alignment. Spain’s refusal in March 2026 to let the Rota and Morón bases be used for American-Israeli operations against Iran is a good example of this. Madrid based its decision on both the limits of bilateral agreements and the UN Charter. The Trump administration responded with threats of trade sanctions and sharp public statements.

The fact that the UK showed similar hesitation at first, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced criticism from Washington for it, showed that even the “special relationship” doesn’t guarantee full immunity. The real dividing line here isn’t geographic or historical — it’s about behavior: Washington rewards allies who take on more responsibility and align with American priorities, while it’s ready to pressure allies who go their own way, no matter how senior they are within the alliance.

Still, it would be wrong to reduce this picture to a simple obedience mechanism. The Spain example showed that European states can protect their own sovereignty, and that American pressure doesn’t always lead to an automatic policy change. So what’s emerging isn’t a hierarchy fully run from the center — it’s an alliance system where the bargaining between security dependence and national independence has gotten tougher.

THE BLACK SEA AS A FUNCTIONAL MIDDLE LAYER

Southeast of the Poland-Germany backbone, Romania, Bulgaria, and Türkiye form a more functional security belt. None of these countries is a continental-scale power center on its own — but they’re essential for Black Sea security, protecting energy routes, defending undersea infrastructure, and reinforcing NATO’s southeastern flank.

Romania’s goal of bringing the Neptun Deep gas field online in 2027 adds an energy dimension to Bucharest’s security importance. Bulgaria strengthening its air defense and ammunition capacity lets it play a bigger role in military movement between the Black Sea and the Middle East. The expansion of the Black Sea Mine Countermeasures Task Group — set up by Türkiye, Romania, and Bulgaria — to also cover protecting undersea infrastructure shows that regional responsibility is increasingly being handed over to the coastal allies themselves.

This setup gives Washington a real advantage: the US can keep up deterrence in the region without keeping a constant, large-scale extra force presence there. For the countries in the region, the same setup points to a period where the American security umbrella hasn’t disappeared completely, but its cost and operational burden are increasingly being carried by local actors.

WHAT MAKES TÜRKİYE DIFFERENT: TWO CORRIDORS, ONE MEETING POINT

What sets Türkiye apart from the other countries in this security belt isn’t just its military capacity — it’s that it sits on the route of two major connectivity projects. The Development Road and the TRIPP corridor taking shape through Zangezur rest on different actors, different funding models, and different geopolitical goals. Even so, both projects could reduce Europe-Asia transport’s dependence on the traditional routes centered on Russia and Iran — and both make Türkiye one of their final transit points.

The Development Road aims to connect the Grand Faw Port on the Persian Gulf to Türkiye through Iraq, and from there to Europe. The transport and infrastructure agreements signed between Ankara and Baghdad in July 2026 matter because they move a project that had stayed at the level of political intent for a long time into the implementation stage. The planned road and rail link through the Fishkhabur–Ovaköy route isn’t just a logistics project that shortens trade time. It could have strategic effects on diversifying energy flows, strengthening Iraq’s economic integration, and giving Gulf capital access to Europe through Türkiye.

The TRIPP corridor is the result of a different kind of change in the South Caucasus. The fact that the route connecting Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan through Armenian territory is being developed under the leadership of American companies points to a new period where Russia’s traditional influence in the region is weakening and Washington is trying to build a more lasting presence through economic means. The corridor isn’t just meant to make transport across Azerbaijani territory easier — it aims to build a wider network linking the Caspian basin and Central Asia to Europe through Türkiye.

Put together, Türkiye’s position becomes clearer. The flow coming from the south through the Gulf and Iraq, and the flow coming from the east through the Caucasus and Caspian, both connect into Türkiye’s transport infrastructure on their way to Europe. This makes Ankara not just a transit country, but a country with a say over how these routes work, how secure they are, and how economically sustainable they are. The “bridge country” comparison doesn’t really capture this new situation — a bridge suggests a passive space you pass through, while a meeting point has the power to bring different networks together or keep them apart.

This position doesn’t automatically give Türkiye a strategic advantage. Whether these corridors actually create economic value depends on solving a lot of technical and political problems — from border security to financing, from railway standards to customs harmonization. Instability in Iraq, the future of Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization, Iran’s concerns, and Russia’s effort to hold onto its regional influence are the main risks facing these projects. Still, this uncertainty doesn’t change the fact that Türkiye’s bargaining power has grown — if anything, in a situation where alternative routes are limited, Ankara’s approval and capacity matter even more.

THE STRUCTURAL REASONS BEHIND THE DIPLOMATIC WARMING

The rise in Türkiye’s connectivity value has come along with positive political signals from different capitals over the first eight months of 2026. President Trump keeping the door open to selling F-35s to Türkiye despite Israeli objections, and calling Ankara a strong ally, suggested that the long-standing deadlock in bilateral defense relations might be overcome. The fact that Lindsey Graham — long known in Congress for his tough stance on Türkiye — met with MİT chief İbrahim Kalın in Ankara shortly before his death, and had been moving toward a softer position on the F-35 issue, also suggests that the change in mood in Washington can’t just be explained by personal chemistry between presidents.

In Berlin, the Türkiye-Germany Strategic Dialogue Mechanism meeting again after a twelve-year gap was one of the clearest signs of this shift on the European side. Germany treating Türkiye as a partner worth including in the development of Europe’s defense industry shows that, despite the political deadlock in Türkiye’s EU membership process, Türkiye can’t be left out of Europe’s security and defense system.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s messages about normalizing relations with Türkiye make up the Caucasus side of this same shift. For Yerevan, opening up relations with Ankara isn’t just about resolving an old historical dispute — it means Armenia coming out of regional isolation and joining new transport networks. So the messages coming from Washington, Berlin, and Yerevan might not be parts of a campaign coordinated from one center. The more likely explanation is that different actors are adjusting to the same underlying reality: as the cost of excluding Türkiye goes up, so does the strategic and economic payoff of cooperating with it.

LESS A DOCTRINE, MORE AN ORDER TAKING SHAPE

None of this proves the US has clearly shifted to a 19th-century British-style “offshore balancing” strategy. Washington’s force structure in Europe, its NATO commitments, and its ability to intervene directly in a crisis are still much bigger than a classic offshore-balancing model would suggest. The Trump administration’s personalized and sometimes contradictory diplomacy also leaves open the question of whether what we’re seeing is a real institutional state doctrine, or just a style of politics tied to this particular period.

But this uncertainty doesn’t make the shift in direction unimportant. What’s emerging is a picture where the US expects more military and financial responsibility from its allies, while trying to protect its own strategic access through bases, weapons systems, energy routes, technology, and transport corridors. This is repositioning, not retreat: American power isn’t leaving the field completely, but it’s taking a more selective, more transactional, lower-direct-cost form.

Türkiye has a real chance to be at the center of this shift. Being the southeastern pillar of European defense, the main actor in Black Sea security, and the meeting point of two separate east-west corridors gives Ankara a wider bargaining space than it’s had in a long time. But the advantage geography gives doesn’t create lasting influence on its own. For that, you need predictable foreign policy, a reliable legal system, strong logistics infrastructure, economic stability, and the institutional capacity to manage crises with allies.

So the real question facing Türkiye in mid-2026 isn’t whether its geopolitical importance is growing — it’s whether this growth can turn into sustainable political and economic power. If Ankara manages that, it could become one of the actors shaping not just the route but the rules of this new order. If it doesn’t, what looks like centrality today will once again end up as unused geographic potential.