Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stood at a podium in Ankara on Friday alongside his German counterpart and asked the question no one has answered in 13 days of war. “What chances are there for negotiation?” he said. “To what extent is it possible?”
Turkey has been talking to Washington and Tehran simultaneously, running a diplomatic channel no other NATO ally can open. The answer, so far, is that Iran will not sit down. A person familiar with the ceasefire talks told The Jerusalem Post that Iran is refusing to negotiate, holding firm to a hard-line posture and presenting initial demands that have gone nowhere.
Turkey, the only NATO member actively attempting to mediate while under Iranian missile fire, is the country whose soil holds the radar that makes European missile defense work.
Mr. Fidan drew a line after the first intercept. He told Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi: “If this was a missile that lost its way, that’s one thing. But if this is going to continue, our advice is: Be careful. Don’t let anyone in Iran embark on such an adventure.”
A second missile came anyway.
On Friday, a third Iranian ballistic missile crossed into Turkish airspace.
Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles confirmed that Spanish Patriot crews at Incirlik Air Base detected and reported the first Iranian missile on March 4.
Omer Ozkizilcik, a security analyst at the Atlantic Council in Ankara, said the missiles were likely aimed at the base, a key joint U.S.-Turkey facility. “Such an attack would be an attack against Turkey and NATO,” he said.
Another interpretation has circulated in Ankara: The missiles were not aimed at Incirlik at all. Senior Iranian military figures have previously threatened to strike the Kurecik radar base in Malatya province, Anadolu Agency analysis noted. That TPY-2 X-band radar gives Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland their early tracking of Iranian missiles. Iran showed this week it can kill such systems — Iranian forces destroyed a TPY-2 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, radar in Jordan early in the war, TRT World reported.
If the missiles over Turkey were mapping Kurecik rather than targeting Incirlik, Iran was not testing a bilateral relationship. It was probing NATO’s nervous system.
No formal NATO response followed, but Mr. Fidan privately warned Tehran, summoned the Iranian ambassador and stopped there.
Neither he nor President Recep Tayyip Erdogan moved toward invoking NATO’s collective defense clause. Washington ruled it out first; Ankara did not object. Mr. Erdogan put his position plainly in a Monday speech: “The primary objective is to keep our country away from this fire.”
Mr. Ozkizilcik explained the logic of restraint: Iran denied responsibility, the missiles were intercepted, no harm was inflicted. “From NATO’s standpoint, the missile was intercepted, no harm was inflicted against NATO member Turkey, and Turkey hasn’t invoked Article 4 or Article 5,” he said. “There is no ground for major actions.”
Mostafa Ahmed, senior researcher at Al Habtoor Research Center in Dubai, says the conflict has exposed two paradigms. Turkey is practicing what Mr. Ahmed calls “borderland containment” — a response driven by geographic proximity, energy dependence and border security. Gulf states are practicing “macroeconomic insulation” — dense economic and diplomatic networks built to firewall domestic stability from regional shocks. The gap between those two positions will widen as the war continues.
Turkey shares a 332-mile land border with Iran and imports a significant amount of its energy across that border — Iran is its second-largest natural gas supplier, covering about 13% of imports.
Annual inflation in Turkey hit 32% in February, before the war inflamed energy markets. Every additional week the Strait of Hormuz stays closed squeezes an economy Mr. Erdogan was already fighting to stabilize.
Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said Thursday that 15 Turkish-owned ships are waiting in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran let one through — the vessel that had previously used an Iranian port. The other 14 are still there. Tehran is applying pressure through a system of permissions, rewarding prior commercial ties and withholding passage from the rest.
The Financial Times reported Friday that Italy and France have reached out to Tehran to secure permission for safe passage.
The closure of the strait has global economic implications, but the U.S.-led war has also created acute internal political problems for Mr. Erdogan.
The Turkish leader’s most consequential domestic bet is the terror-free Turkey initiative — negotiations with jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan aimed at ending five decades of conflict — and it cannot survive significant Kurdish mobilization on Turkey’s borders.
Iran’s population of 93 million includes roughly 10 million Kurds. The Kurdistan Free Life Party, PJAK, operates there and has not complied with Mr. Ocalan’s disarmament call. The CIA’s reported moves to arm Kurdish forces inside Iran immediately set off alarms in Ankara — U.S. cooperation with Syrian Kurdish forces broke the last peace process in 2015.
U.S. President Trump’s weekend messaging walked back the CIA arms reports, but the option has not been taken off the table. “Much will depend on the American willingness to provide support to the Iranian version of the PKK,” said Mensur Akgun, a political scientist at Istanbul Kultur University. “The Trump administration seems to prioritize Turkey over its obscure goal of regime collapse.”
Azerbaijani authorities announced this week the arrest of Iranian operatives who had planned strikes on Israeli and Jewish targets in the country — and on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Drones struck Nakhchivan, the Azerbaijani exclave bordering Turkey, Iran and Armenia. Turkey considers itself a guarantor of Azerbaijani security. If Azerbaijan enters the war directly, Ankara’s position stops being complicated and starts being untenable.
Turkey and Iran are not allies. Mr. Fidan said Turkey’s prewar diplomatic efforts failed partly because of Tehran’s own miscalculations, and Mr. Erdogan called the U.S.-Israeli strikes illegal and Iran’s Gulf retaliation unacceptable in the same breath.
Mr. Fidan has spoken by phone with 15 foreign ministers since the war began, including Iran’s Mr. Araghchi and counterparts across the Gulf. He met with Washington’s Syria Special Envoy Tom Barrack, took a call from U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and talked through the war with the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Neither side has moved. Mr. Ozkizilcik said the more troubling issue for Turkey is seeing the United States being dragged into this war by Israel. Mr. Fidan’s line at Friday’s press conference — the U.S.-Israeli strikes were as wrong as Iran’s Gulf retaliation — is a mediator’s position, not a negotiating hand.
In Ankara, Iran’s denials are not seen as aimed at Mr. Fidan or the Turkish defense ministry — they know what hit their airspace. The denials are aimed at the Turkish public, where anti-Israel sentiment runs high and each missile sparks a debate about whether NATO infrastructure is making Turkey a target. After the third missile on Friday, the defense ministry’s own statement said Iran had launched it — then added that consultations were being conducted with the relevant country to clarify all aspects of the incident. It did not name Iran a second time.
Mr. Akgun said Iran’s denials reflect incompetence, not strategy. “It is not about sentiments,” he said. “They don’t want to prolong the war and serve the U.S. or Israeli interests due to clumsy decision-making in Iran.” The official Ankara position, he said, is that the missiles are the work of “rogue elements within the various military structures in Iran.”
He was flat on the underlying logic: “I don’t think that there is any strategic logic behind failed attacks against Turkey. Even the least smart decision maker in Iran wouldn’t want to confront NATO let alone Turkey.” He added: “Not all Turks are fond of Iran. Ankara simply does not want to be part of a war that does not serve its own political interests.”
NATO’s most exposed member is also the one its allies are least eager to discuss. Turkey is not the only NATO state that has absorbed Iranian fire — a Hezbollah drone struck the British sovereign base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus on March 1, and NATO’s response there was equally muted.
But Turkey’s exposure is structural in a way Cyprus’ is not. International partners increasingly view Turkey’s role, Mr. Ahmed says, as “defensive and localised” — focused on absorbing immediate friction and securing its frontiers. The Gulf, meanwhile, offers what he calls “systemic anchoring.”
“Global policymakers increasingly measure reliability in the contemporary Middle East by its ability to absorb shocks, manage volatility, and prevent economic contagion,” he said. “Measured by these functional metrics, the Gulf states are firmly establishing themselves as indispensable anchors.”
NATO holds its next summit in Ankara on July 7-8 — the first time the alliance gathers on Turkish soil. Fuat Oktay, chairman of Turkey’s parliament foreign affairs committee, described it in an interview published Wednesday as a chance to review alliance commitments and strengthen deterrence. Two days before that interview, a second Iranian missile was knocked down over Gaziantep.
At the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi last week, a NATO panel noted what the Observer Research Foundation called the alliance’s central paradox: its coffers are fuller than ever, while trust between partners has reached a new nadir.
What does NATO owe a member that absorbed missile strikes and did not invoke collective defense? What does the alliance offer the country whose territory holds the radar that makes European missile defense function? And if the peace process with the PKK’s Kurdish separatists has broken by July — under pressure from Kurdish mobilization Washington may have encouraged — what does Mr. Erdogan walk in asking for?
The Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw identified four scenarios that could each force Ankara’s hand before July: further Iranian strikes on Incirlik or Kurecik; U.S. pressure to shift Turkey’s posture if Mr. Trump abandons negotiations; resumed arms flows to Kurdish forces inside Iran; or economic shockwaves from a prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure.
Mr. Oktay closed his Wednesday interview with a line that has aged quickly. Turkey, he said, is fully committed to its allies’ security. “We likewise expect them to be fully committed to Turkey’s security and defense.”
Mr. Fidan named the scenario that worries Ankara most. “We are against all scenarios that aim to instigate a civil war in Iran that target ethnic or religious fault lines,” he said this week. “This is the most dangerous scenario.”
Mr. Akgun said Ankara is watching but not yet alarmed.
“So far, there are no refugee influxes from Iran,” he said. “So long as there is no civil war comparable to Iraq or Syria, we don’t anticipate any in the near future. But if it happens, it will be a burden for everyone in our vicinity.”
Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said Thursday that Turkey has drawn up three contingency plans, the first aimed at stopping any mass movement before it crosses the border.
The third missile landed while Mr. Fidan was still at the podium.
“If Iranian attacks were to continue, or were to land a hit inside Turkey, Ankara’s and indirectly NATO’s hand may be forced to react,” Mr. Ozkizilcik said.
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