European Union

Written by Sebastian Clapp.

Strengthening joint capability development has become a central priority of EU defence policy in response to persistent capability gaps, fragmentation in procurement, and the deteriorating European security environment. Although Member States retain primary responsibility for defence planning and acquisitions, the European Union has progressively established instruments intended to encourage cooperative capability development and strengthen the European defence technological and industrial base. Defence expenditure in the EU has increased substantially in recent years, reaching an estimated €381 billion in 2025, yet it remains significantly lower than that of the United States. Fragmentation also persists in equipment and capability development. To address these challenges, the EU has developed a set of policy and financial instruments covering the entire capability cycle. Strategic priorities are defined through frameworks such as the Capability Development Plan and Coordinated Annual Review on Defence, while initiatives including Permanent Structured Cooperation, and the European Defence Fund promote collaborative research and capability development projects. Recent policy initiatives, notably the European defence industrial strategy and the Readiness 2030 agenda, seek to translate increased defence spending into coordinated investment, industrial capacity expansion and faster capability development.

The European Parliament emphasises that joint capability development is essential to reduce duplication and strengthen European defence readiness. It argues that higher defence spending will remain inefficient if it continues to be organised primarily at national level. Parliament therefore calls for stronger EU-level coordination, expanded joint procurement and increased use of instruments such as the European defence industry programme to achieve economies of scale, improve interoperability and reinforce the EU defence industry.

Read the complete briefing on ‘EU joint defence capability development‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

On Wednesday, Parliament and Council negotiators agreed on proposals to accelerate defence investment and improve the EU’s responsiveness to security challenges.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
Committee on Security and Defence

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

On Wednesday, Parliament and Council negotiators agreed on proposals to accelerate defence investment and improve the EU’s responsiveness to security challenges.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
Committee on Security and Defence

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

On Wednesday, Parliament and Council negotiators agreed on proposals to accelerate defence investment and improve the EU’s responsiveness to security challenges.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
Committee on Security and Defence

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

The Zarafshan River, outside the venue of the Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly in Uzbekistan, is central to a USD 30 million GEF-funded initiative, the Central Asia Water and Land Nexus Programme (CAWLN). Credit: IISD/ENB/Danny Skilton

By Kizito Makoye
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

As ministers, diplomats and development officials assembled in Samarkand Congress Centre for a ceremonial family photograph, the mood carried unusual symbolism. Behind the smiles and formalities stood a region confronting a harder reality: rivers are shrinking, soils are tiring, temperatures are rising, and the old ways of managing land and water are no longer working.

For decades, Central Asia’s countries have wrestled with environmental pressures separately – water ministries worrying about irrigation, ministries of agriculture chasing production targets, and conservation agencies protecting fragmented ecosystems. But climate change is dissolving those bureaucratic boundaries.

At the Eighth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly in Uzbekistan held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, the five Central Asian countries officially launched implementation of the Central Asia Water and Land Nexus Programme (CAWLN) – a USD 30 million GEF-funded initiative implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and designed to manage water, land, biodiversity and food systems as one interconnected system.

Supporters say the initiative could become one of the world’s most closely watched experiments in transboundary climate adaptation.

“We all know Central Asia faces increasing environmental pressures linked to land degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and climate change,” said Yerland Nysanbaev Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Kazakhstan, during the high-level roundtable. “But in response to that, the countries have come together to jointly address these environmental issues.”

Senior government representatives and development partners pose for a group photograph during the official launch of the Central Asia Water–Land Nexus Programme at the Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The initiative brings together the five Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – to strengthen regional cooperation on water security, ecosystem restoration and climate resilience through integrated land and water management. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

Stretching from Kazakhstan’s grasslands to Tajikistan’s mountains and Uzbekistan’s irrigated plains, Central Asia depends on shared river systems and fragile ecosystems that sustain more than 60 million people. Yet the region is warming faster than the global average, glaciers are retreating, drought cycles are intensifying and water competition is growing.

Demand for water has become one of the region’s defining vulnerabilities.

Nearly half of Central Asia already suffers from land degradation, generating economic losses estimated at USD 6 billion annually. At the same time, growing populations and changing consumption patterns continue to place additional pressure on limited natural resources.

Katrina Schneeberger, State Secretary and Director of Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment, delivers remarks during the official launch of the Central Asia Water–Land Nexus Programme at the Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

The project seeks to confront those pressures through what officials repeatedly described as a “nexus approach”.

For Switzerland – one of the programme’s strongest supporters – the initiative represents years of regional engagement finally converging into a broader vision.

Addressing ministers and delegates, Katrina Schneeberger, State Secretary and Director of Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment, described the programme as a model for the type of environmental cooperation increasingly needed in a warming world.

“It focuses on countries in need, it fosters the integration across environmental topics, and it supports cross-border cooperation,” she said.

Schneeberger argued that environmental policymaking has too often treated ecosystems as disconnected pieces.

“For too long, environmental topics like desertification or water have been tackled separately,” she said. “But in the end, water and land issues are connected.”

Her explanation was simple but powerful.

“Well-managed land will require less water, and properly managed freshwater sources will allow for sustainable and productive agriculture.”

Switzerland’s support for integrated environmental programmes in Central Asia stretches back decades, including transboundary initiatives under the Blue Peace Central Asia framework and previous regional land management programmes.

But officials say the new programme marks a shift in scale and ambition.

At its core, CAWLN seeks to move from managing sectors individually to managing entire landscapes and river systems.

FAO Deputy Director-General Godfrey Magwenzi speaking about the interconnection of climate change, biodiversity loss, water stress, land degradation, and food security across landscapes, river basins, and economies in Central Asia. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

FAO Deputy Director-General Godfrey Magwenzi framed the challenge in global terms.

“Climate change, biodiversity loss, water stress, land degradation, and food security are interconnected across landscapes, river basins, and economies in Central Asia,” he told delegates.

“Integration and cooperation matter to tackle transborder risks, to help countries act together on the drivers of vulnerability, and to accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Magwenzi noted that since 2009, FAO has helped countries in the region mobilise nearly USD 77 million in GEF financing.

One previous regional initiative restored integrated management across 2.8 million hectares of drought-prone and salt-affected landscapes while avoiding nearly nine million tonnes of emissions and strengthening resilience for millions of farmers.

The new initiative is built around three major levers.

First, strengthening transboundary governance by creating mechanisms for policy coordination and knowledge sharing.

Second, supporting integrated action directly on landscapes – from farms and forests to river basins.

Third, improving evidence-based decisions using satellite monitoring, geographic information systems and integrated data platforms.

Officials say technology will become central to implementation.

Earth observation systems will track water use, land degradation and ecosystem health, while decision-support tools will help governments translate environmental data into practical action.

Those tools may prove critical.

River Zarafshon near Panjakent, Sughd Region, Tajikistan. Credit: Petar Milošević/Wikipedia

The region’s future is closely tied to two rivers – the Amu Darya and Syr Darya.

Flowing from Central Asia’s mountains toward the Aral Sea basin, these rivers connect countries, economies and millions of livelihoods.

The programme combines four national projects with basin-wide interventions and regional coordination mechanisms.

National projects will address priorities ranging from biodiversity conservation and pasture management in Kazakhstan to agro-woodland restoration in Kyrgyzstan, climate-resilient agriculture in Turkmenistan and ecosystem restoration in Uzbekistan.

Regional components will focus on integrated water management across the Amu Darya, Zarafshon, Panj, Syr Darya and Narin river basins.

Together, supporters hope these investments will restore more than one million hectares of land, avoid millions of tonnes of carbon emissions and improve livelihoods for nearly half a million people.

Francesca Carabini, who leads transboundary cooperation work under the UNECE Water Convention, reminded participants that Central Asia’s experiments with nexus governance are already shaping global practice.

One of the earliest river basins assessed under the Water-Energy-Ecosystem Nexus framework was the Syr Darya.

During a separate press briefing, FAO climate and environment chief Kaveh Zahedi argued that agriculture, often blamed for environmental degradation, must become part of the solution.

“The way we produce food and support farmers is directly connected to the health of our climate,” he said.

“It’s directly connected to the health of our soil and land. And it’s directly connected to our water and ecosystems.”

Zahedi cited alarming global trends.

In 2024 alone, more than 96 million people faced acute food insecurity linked partly to weather extremes intensified by climate change, while more than 700 million people continue to live with hunger.

Yet agriculture also offers opportunity.

“Done right, food and farming can deliver up to one-third of the emissions reductions needed while also protecting nature.”

Responding to IPS questions about balancing biodiversity and economic needs, Zahedi rejected the notion that environmental protection and livelihoods must compete.

“The sustainable use of biodiversity is very much at the heart, including sustainable agriculture,” he said.

“It’s not just about protection of biodiversity – it is about conservation, regeneration, and sustainable use of biodiversity.”

He added: “You don’t need to tell a farmer how important it is to have healthy soils.”

Projects such as agroforestry and landscape restoration, he argued, improve resilience while protecting incomes.

At the Assembly’s closing ceremony, GEF Interim CEO Claude Gascon had offered perhaps the clearest political message of the gathering.

“Today marks an important moment for Central Asia and for the global environment as we enter the sprint towards 2030,” he said.

“The five countries in the region have once again joined environmental forces.”

Gascon described the programme as evidence that countries increasingly recognise that “water and land issues are interlinked and are best tackled together rather than in isolation.”

He called the shift toward “whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches” essential for the next phase of environmental action.

Outside the venue, Samarkand’s summer heat offered its own reminder of what is at stake.

The city perched along the Zarafshan River – one of Central Asia’s historic lifelines and a place where questions of water, agriculture and survival have shaped civilisation for centuries.

Today, climate change is forcing those questions back to the centre.

Whether the Central Asia Water and Land Nexus Programme succeeds will depend not only on funding or policy but also on whether countries can sustain cooperation across borders long after the conference banners come down.

Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

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• Turkey’s middle-power status is neither rhetorical inflation nor a recent discovery; it is the product of a long-standing strategic self-positioning that combines NATO-embedded military weight, geostrategic exposure, diplomatic activism, defence-industrial growth, and regional reach. Ankara’s middle-power identity is therefore not merely about prestige, but about converting vulnerability into influence and exposure into diplomatic relevance.
• The core of Turkey’s middle-power behaviour lies in “calibrated non-exclusivity”: Ankara remains anchored in NATO, European markets, and Euro-Atlantic institutions, while simultaneously expanding room for manoeuvre with Russia, the Gulf, Central Asia, Africa, and parts of Asia. This does not amount to a full break with the West, but to a strategy of staying connected everywhere while becoming fully dependent nowhere.
• Turkey’s defence-industrial rise, especially through drones, unmanned systems, and new European partnerships such as Baykar–Leonardo and Hürjet-related cooperation with Spain, has transformed hard power into diplomatic leverage. Turkish military capacity is no longer only about deterrence; it now creates export ties, training networks, maintenance dependencies, and political influence across conflict zones and partner states.
• Geography is both Turkey’s greatest constraint and its greatest asset. The Russia–Ukraine war, Syria, Iraq, Iran–Israel tensions, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the South Caucasus all expose Turkey to overlapping crises; yet the same geography allows Ankara to act as a connector between Europe and the Middle East, NATO and the Black Sea, energy producers and consumers, and conflict zones and negotiation tables.
• Turkey’s biggest problem is not the absence of middle-power resources, but the difficulty of converting them into durable credibility. Economic fragility, inflation, currency volatility, democratic backsliding, weak rule-of-law perceptions, politicised institutions, and the unresolved post-Erdoğan question all limit Turkey’s ability to become a more trusted, coherent, and institutionally continuous middle power.

Read here in pdf the Working paper by Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, Non-Resident Senior Scholar, Turkey Programme, ELIAMEP.

Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister and former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, has recently helped reopen the wider debate on middle powers by arguing that, in a fractured international order, “middle powers must act together, because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” Yet for Turkey, this conceptual framework is far from a novelty; rather, it represents a long-standing element of its diplomatic self-definition. Ankara has been presenting itself in broadly middle-power terms for decades: as early as 1998, Foreign Minister İsmail Cem argued that Turkey aspired to a “pivotal role” in Eurasia rather than a peripheral one. More recent Turkish foreign-policy doctrine has continued to situate the country in an expansive strategic space stretching across the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. In this sense, Turkey did not discover the middle-power idiom after the current crisis of world order; rather, it was utilizing this framework to articulate its foreign-policy identity well before leaders such as Carney returned the concept to the forefront of geopolitical debate. This self-positioning is also grounded in material capability. NATO has repeatedly described Turkey as the ally with the second-largest army in the Alliance—a military weight that matters in a volatile neighbourhood where regional instability it is not a peripheral concern for Turkish strategy is not external to Turkish strategy but intrinsic to its immediate security environment. For a state located at the intersection of Europe, the Black Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, middle-power status is therefore far more than a matter of prestige. It is an advantage indeed and rather it serves as a mechanism for converting geostrategic exposure into diplomatic relevance, alliance weight into bargaining power, and regional vulnerability into selective activism.

Which is to say middle-power status is meaningful for Turkey not because it flatters its ambitions, but because it offers the most plausible framework via which a state located amidst so many theatres of crisis can convert exposure into influence and vulnerability into strategic agency.

In the post-post-Cold War period, how states define themselves matters almost as much as the material capabilities they possess (Ikenberry 2024). In an age of layered uncertainty, strategic self-description may not eliminate ambiguity altogether, but it does clarify at least one critical dimension; how an actor wishes to be seen, what scale of role it claims, and what kind of responsibilities it is prepared to shoulder (Blühdorn 2007). In this respect, Turkey has increasingly described itself in middle-power terms in recent years. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has been reported as casting Turkey as a “key middle power” and vital diplomatic broker, while official Turkish foreign-policy statements consistently project the country as an effective and respected international actor pursuing a proactive, multilayered strategy across its contiguous maritime and terrestrial neighbourhoods. Yet this is not simply a voluntary branding exercise or aspirational identity claim; it is a strategic necessity dictated by Turkey’s position at the nexus of multiple overlapping security crises. Turkey sits in the middle of multiple overlapping conflict zones and security crises. These include the Russia–Ukraine war to the north, the Iran–Israel confrontation to the south-east, the some of the still on-going crises in Syria and Iraq on its southern borders, persistent tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, and recurrent instability in the Caucasus. In such an environment, it is not enough for Ankara merely to call itself a middle power; it must also behave like one through a combination of military readiness, diplomatic activism, alliance management, regional mediation, and strategic selectivity. Which is to say middle-power status is meaningful for Turkey not because it flatters its ambitions, but because it offers the most plausible framework via which a state located amidst so many theatres of crisis can convert exposure into influence and vulnerability into strategic agency.

However, as Alper Coşkun rightly notes, Turkey’s middle-power trajectory is accompanied by important tensions and vulnerabilities. These do not stem primarily from an absence of structural assets; on the contrary, Turkey already possesses many of the material and geopolitical ingredients that make middle-power behaviour plausible. The more critical question is whether Ankara can translate these assets into a sufficiently coherent strategic posture. Coşkun’s analysis suggests that Turkey’s primary challenge lies in managing the contradictions of multi-alignment: seeking greater room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis Russia, China, and the wider non-Western world, while continuing to rely on NATO, Western markets, and established security ties that remain indispensable to its national interests. If these tensions were reduced, Turkey could derive even greater advantage from its middle-power position than it does today. But that would require greater clarity on three intertwined issues: interest, morality, and identity. Ankara must be more consistent in defining which interests are truly vital and which are negotiable; which normative principles it is prepared to defend beyond immediate expediency; and how it understands its own place between the West and the non-Western spaces with which it also seeks deeper engagement. Without such clarification, strategic flexibility risks appearing as opportunism, and autonomy as inconsistency. If these questions are answered more clearly, however, Turkey’s middle-power status would become not only more credible, but also more effective.

Against this backdrop, this policy paper proceeds from a simple but consequential premise: Turkey’s middle-power status should neither be taken for granted nor dismissed as rhetorical inflation; rather, it must be explained. The analysis therefore first examines why and how Turkey has come to occupy a middle-power position, identifying the principal pillars of that status: military capability, geostrategic location, diplomatic activism, alliance embeddedness, defence-industrial capacity, and regional reach. It then turns to a more difficult question: what prevents that status from being consolidated more fully and translated into a durable strategic advantage? In doing so, the paper argues that Turkey’s future as a middle power will depend not only on the resources it commands, but also on the coherence with which it defines its interests, the credibility with which it projects its identity, and the consistency with which it aligns power with purpose.

The Resources of Turkish Middle-Power Status: How Ankara Turns Strategic Diversity into Influence

In the academic literature, middle powers are generally understood not simply as states that sit somewhere between great powers and small states in material rank (Abbondanza 2020), but as countries that combine significant regional weight with the behavioural capacity to shape outcomes beyond their immediate borders through coalition-building, selective activism, and multidimensional diplomacy (Henke 2019). What distinguishes a middle power, in other words, is not size alone but the ability to convert limited structural power into disproportionate political influence (Jordaan 2003). This definition fits Turkey especially well. Turkey is neither a great power capable of unilaterally imposing order across regions, nor a secondary state subject to the preferences of stronger actors. Rather, it is a state with substantial military, economic, diplomatic, and geographic assets that allow it to project its influence across multiple theatres, even as its capabilities stop short of hegemonic control. Its middle-power status therefore rests not only on what it has, but also on how it uses what it has.

Turkey’s middle-power practice seeks to remain connected everywhere while becoming fully dependent nowhere. In doing so, Ankara endeavours to generate a diverse mix of opportunities within an international order that rewards flexibility, selective engagement, and strategic adaptability.

Turkey’s evolution into a middle power is best understood through this combination of resources and agency. A defining strength of its contemporary foreign policy is its capacity to sustain multidimensional alignments without becoming fully absorbed by any single strategic axis. In earlier decades, Turkey was often characterised—fairly or unfairly—as the satellite of a particular bloc or a straightforward extension of the Western security order. Today, that picture is no longer adequate. Ankara has not broken with the West, but neither does it allow itself to be defined solely by its Western institutional belonging. It remains embedded in NATO, tied to European markets, and connected to long-standing Euro-Atlantic institutions, while simultaneously seeking room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis Russia, the Gulf, Central Asia, Africa, and parts of Asia. This is a strategy not of detachment, but of calibrated non-exclusivity. Situated precisely at this intersection, Turkey’s middle-power practice seeks to remain connected everywhere while becoming fully dependent nowhere. In doing so, Ankara endeavours to generate a diverse mix of opportunities within an international order that rewards flexibility, selective engagement, and strategic adaptability.

That strategy is sustained by a set of concrete instruments that impart practical substance to Turkish middle-power behaviour powerhood. The first is military cooperation, through which Turkey projects influence, builds defence partnerships, and translates hard-power capacity into political leverage (Yalcinkaya and Dumankaya 2025). The second is economic engagement, including trade, investment, and infrastructure, which allows Ankara to deepen its relational ties well beyond the security sphere. The third is its geopolitical location at the intersection of Europe, the Black Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and wider Eurasian corridors. The fourth is the use of religious and cultural elements, which enable it to extend its influence through softer, identity-based, and society-facing channels (Ozturk 2021). The fifth is energy, in terms both of transit routes and the wider politics of connectivity and interdependence. Taken together, these resources explain not only why Turkey can plausibly be described as a middle power, but also how it has sought to behave like one: by turning strategic diversity into influence without fully anchoring itself to any single pole within the international system.

In the sections that follow, the paper unpacks these instruments one by one. It first examines Turkey’s military and defence-industrial capacity as a source of hard-power credibility, before turning to the economic networks that sustain its external reach. It then considers the geopolitical value of Turkey’s location, the role of religion and culture in extending influence beyond formal diplomacy, and finally the importance of energy routes and connectivity in strengthening Ankara’s bargaining position. By examining these resources separately, the analysis shows how Turkey’s middle-power status is produced not by any single asset, but by the cumulative interaction of material capacity, strategic location, diplomatic agency, and adaptive statecraft.

Military Capacity and Defence Cooperation: Hard Power as Middle-Power Leverage

…defence industries are increasingly shaped by technological competition, industrial integration, and the pursuit of national and regional resilience within a rapidly changing security environment. Turkey’s answer has been to build a defence sector that supports autonomy without abandoning alliance embeddedness.

Military capacity is one of the clearest foundations of Turkey’s middle-power status. Turkey has long been one of the few countries in its region able to sustain a relatively self-reliant security posture, partly because of its own state tradition and partly because of the deterrent and institutional support provided by NATO. Its membership in the Alliance has given Ankara access to strategic depth, interoperability, training, intelligence-sharing, and collective defence structures, while Turkey itself has remained one of NATO’s most militarily significant members. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has described Turkey as having the Alliance’s second-largest army and spending over 2% of GDP on defence, underlining its centrality to NATO’s security architecture. Yet the changing character of war has also pushed Ankara to move beyond reliance on alliance structures alone. The rise of drone warfare, air-defence saturation, electronic warfare, long-range precision strike, and hybrid conflict has encouraged Turkey to invest heavily in its own defence-industrial ecosystem. The Swedish Defence Research Agency’s Defence Industrial Outlook 2025 captures this wider global context well. According to this analysis, defence industries are increasingly shaped by technological competition, industrial integration, and the pursuit of national and regional resilience within a rapidly changing security environment. Turkey’s answer has been to build a defence sector that supports autonomy without abandoning alliance embeddedness.

The most visible symbol of this transformation has been Turkey’s drone and unmanned-systems industry.

The most visible symbol of this transformation has been Turkey’s drone and unmanned-systems industry. The Bayraktar TB2, Akıncı, Kızılelma and other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/SİHAs) have provided Ankara with a relatively low-cost, politically visible, and exportable military instrument. These systems have not only reshaped Turkey’s own military doctrine; they have also expanded its influence through defence exports, training, maintenance, and operational partnerships. A recent assessment by the Bloomsbury Intelligence & Security Institute noted that Turkey’s rapid emergence as a drone power was driven by state-backed domestic production and by the export success of the Bayraktar TB2, which has become central to the country’s technological autonomy and foreign-policy reach. This matters for middle-power politics, because drones allow Turkey to convert technological niches into diplomatic leverage. They create durable relationships with partner states, increase dependence on Turkish maintenance and training ecosystems, and give Ankara visibility in conflicts where it may not wish to deploy large conventional forces directly. In other words, Turkish drones are not only weapons; they are also instruments of relationship-building.

Turkey’s military-industrial rise is also increasingly embedded in private-sector-led cooperation with European partners. The 2025 Baykar–Leonardo joint venture is especially important in this regard. Following a memorandum of understanding signed in Rome, Leonardo and Baykar established LBA Systems as a 50–50 joint venture—headquartered in Italy—for the development of unmanned technologies. Furthermore, Baykar’s acquisition of Piaggio Aerospace further deepened this Italian connection, showing that Turkey’s defence industry has moved beyond exporting platforms to entering the European defence-industrial ecosystem through ownership, co-production and joint development. A similar pattern is visible in Spain, where Airbus and Turkish Aerospace have advanced their cooperation on the Hürjet advanced jet trainer; Airbus is leading Spain’s new combat training system, while Turkish Aerospace serves as the manufacturer of the Hürjet platform. According to industry reports  Spain and Turkey signed a €2.6 billion agreement for 30 Hürjet aircraft, the first foreign sale of the aircraft, with deliveries planned from 2028 through to 2036 and deeper defence cooperation between the two NATO allies expected to follow. These partnerships matter because they show Turkey acting not as a peripheral consumer of Western defence technology, but as a co-producer and agenda-shaper within European defence supply chains.

Turkey’s hard-power profile is also visible in its military footprint beyond its borders. While its overseas presence is not comparable to that of a great power, it is far more extensive than that of a typical regional state. In Somalia, the establishment of Camp TURKSOM in Mogadishu in 2017—Ankara’s largest overseas military base—has serves as a primary vehicle for training Somali forces and building a long-term security partnership. In Qatar, Turkey maintains a military presence that reinforces its Gulf security role and gives Ankara a foothold in one of the region’s most strategically sensitive theatres. In Libya, Turkish forces and military advisers have supported the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity. In wider assessments of Turkey’s regional military posture, bases or facilities linked to Misrata and Al-Watiya are consistently identified as components of Ankara’s Mediterranean security architecture. In Northern Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkish military deployments remain central to Ankara’s understanding of deterrence, maritime rights, and regional balance. Taken together, these deployments illustrate a classic middle-power pattern; thus, while Turkey cannot impose order globally, it can build forward positions in selected theatres where its security interests, historical ties, and diplomatic ambitions overlap.

The same logic applies to Turkey’s role in shaping conflict outcomes, where its influence often operates through training, intelligence, drones, logistics, partner-force support and diplomatic leverage rather than direct combat alone. In the South Caucasus, Ankara’s support for Azerbaijan demonstrated that Turkey could affect the regional military balance through training, defence cooperation, strategic signalling, and technological assistance, while avoiding the profile of a conventional occupying power. More broadly, Turkey’s role in the Russia–Ukraine war shows how military capacity and diplomatic positioning can reinforce one another. Ankara has maintained relations with both Moscow and Kyiv, closed the Turkish Straits to warships under the Montreux Convention, supplied military equipment to Ukraine, and repeatedly offered itself as a venue for negotiations. More recently, Turkey has signalled a possible role in any post-ceasefire reassurance or peacekeeping architecture. Carnegie Europe has argued that Turkey is positioning itself as a key player in a postwar reassurance force for Ukraine, especially in the Black Sea. Turkish officials have also indicated that any troop deployment would require a ceasefire and a clearly defined mission, and that Ankara would be well placed to support Black Sea security and freedom of navigation. Thus, Turkey’s military capacity does not simply make it stronger; it gives Ankara the practical tools to act as a broker, security provider, deterrent actor, and selective stabiliser in a highly unstable neighbourhood.

Economic Reach: Fragile Foundations, Flexible Openings

The economic pillar of Turkey’s middle-power status is more complicated than its military or geopolitical profile. On the one hand, the Turkish economy remains one of the most serious constraints on Ankara’s external ambition. Persistent inflationary pressures, currency volatility, dependence on external finance, periodic balance-of-payments anxieties, and uneven investor confidence all limit the degree to which Turkey can convert diplomatic ambition into sustained material power. This is a major vulnerability, and we will return to it more fully in the section on constraints. Yet it would be misleading to treat economic fragility as economic insignificance. Turkey still possesses a large domestic market, a young and substantial population, an internationally active private sector, a sizeable diaspora, and a geographic position that places it at the intersection of European, Eurasian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and African commercial spaces. These assets do not make Turkey an economic great power, but they do give it the capacity to build bilateral economic partnerships, expand trade corridors, and use economic connectivity as a practical instrument of middle-power influence.

The European Union remains the central reference point in this picture. Politically, EU–Turkey relations are often strained, and the long-discussed modernisation of the Customs Union has been blocked by wider political disagreements. Economically, however, the relationship remains too significant  and too deeply embedded to be treated as secondary. The European Commission states that EU–Turkey trade reached a record level of more than €210 billion in 2024, making Turkey the EU’s fifth-largest trading partner. This matters not only because of the scale of trade, but also because the relationship anchors Turkey to European production chains, investment flows, regulatory standards, customs procedures, and export markets. For Turkey, the EU is not simply one partner among many; it remains the most important economic anchor of its external relations. For Turkey, the EU is not simply one partner among many; it remains the most important economic anchor of its external relations. For the EU, Turkey is not simply a difficult candidate country; it is also an industrial, logistical, and commercial partner whose geography and market size make it strategically valuable. The paradox, therefore, is clear; political relations are often frozen, but economic interdependence remains alive. That paradox is central to Turkey’s middle-power behaviour. Ankara is seeking strategic autonomy, but does so from within a dense web of economic interdependence with Europe.

Turkey and the UK already have a trade agreement, inherited and adapted after Brexit, but redundant have been negotiating an enhanced Free Trade Agreement. 

This also explains why Turkey has tried to widen, rather than replace, its economic partnerships. The United Kingdom is a useful example. Turkey and the UK already have a trade agreement, inherited and adapted after Brexit, but redundant have been negotiating an enhanced Free Trade Agreement. The UK government reported that the fourth round of negotiations took place in London in the week commencing 23 February 2026, and that progress had been made in several areas, including services. A deeper UK–Turkey agreement would matter, because it could move the relationship beyond goods trade into services, digital trade, investment, procurement, and regulatory cooperation. For Ankara, this kind of agreement is not an alternative to the EU market, but it is part of a wider strategy of diversification. Turkey’s economic statecraft is increasingly seeking to create a portfolio of relationships, with the EU serving as the structural anchor, the UK as a post-Brexit bilateral opportunity, the Gulf as a source of capital and investment, Africa as a field of commercial expansion, and the Balkans as a nearby space of trade, logistics, construction, and political familiarity. This is precisely how a middle power attempts to maximise its room for manoeuvre—not by discarding old dependencies, but by multiplying its options regarding them.

The Balkans illustrate this logic especially well. Turkey does not dominate the region economically in the way the EU does, but its presence is visible, flexible, and politically meaningful. Proximity matters, and Turkish firms can operate easily across Balkan markets. Moreover, Turkish Airlines and transport corridors connect the region to wider commercial networks, and historical and diaspora ties create familiarity that pure market metrics often miss. Turkish exports to Balkan countries reportedly rose by around 17% in 2024, reaching $23.4 billion, which points to the growing commercial density of the relationship. The Balkans’ importance for Turkey is not only trade volume, however; it is trade combined with construction, banking, infrastructure, cultural familiarity, and political access. In middle-power terms, this gives Ankara a layered form of influence. It cannot displace the EU as the region’s main economic horizon, but it can become a practical partner in sectors where speed, familiarity, and political flexibility matter. Turkey’s role in the Balkans therefore reflects the broader character of its middle-power strategy, which works best not when it tries to replace larger actors, but when it inserts itself into the gaps between them.

Africa reveals the same pattern on a larger and more ambitious scale. Turkey’s economic engagement with Africa has expanded dramatically over the past two decades, driven by trade, contracting, aviation, development assistance, diplomacy, and defence-industrial links. Turkish officials have stated that Turkey–Africa trade exceeded $37 billion in 2024, while Turkish contractors have completed major infrastructure projects across the continent. This is not Chinese-style economic statecraft based on massive lending and infrastructure dominance, nor is it EU-style engagement driven by regulatory frameworks and development conditionality. Instead, Turkey’s African presence is more relational and entrepreneurial. It combines embassies, business councils, airlines, construction firms, humanitarian agencies, schools, trade fairs, and—increasingly—defence cooperation. That combination is important, because it allows Ankara to present itself as a partner that is more accessible than Europe, less overbearing than China, and less historically freighted than some Western actors. Whether that image is always accepted is another matter, but the strategic intention is clear: Turkey uses economic networks to create political access, and political access to deepen economic opportunity.

…the Turkish economy is both a constraint and a resource: It limits Ankara’s ambitions, but it also gives Turkey enough reach to act as a middle power—not as a dominant economic pole, but as a flexible connector capable of turning commercial relationships into strategic relevance.

This is where economics connects most clearly to middle-power status. Turkey’s economy is not strong enough to sustain a global power role, and its macroeconomic fragilities can undermine credibility, raise borrowing costs, and reduce the predictability of its external commitments. Yet middle powers do not need to dominate the global economy to matter. They need to use available resources selectively, relationally, and strategically. Turkey does this by combining market size, private-sector dynamism, bilateral trade agreements, construction capacity, transport connectivity, diaspora networks, and geographic access. Its economic influence is uneven, but it is real. It is strongest where Turkish business networks, political familiarity, logistical proximity, and cultural access reinforce one another; it is weakest where financial instability and policy unpredictability damage trust. In this sense, the Turkish economy is both a constraint and a resource: It limits Ankara’s ambitions, but it also gives Turkey enough reach to act as a middle power—not as a dominant economic pole, but as a flexible connector capable of turning commercial relationships into strategic relevance.

Geography as Constraint and an Advantage

Behind Turkey’s middle-power behaviour lies a powerful geopolitical reality. Ankara’s active stance is driven not only by ambition, but also by necessity. Turkey is in one of the most demanding strategic environments in the world, where almost every major regional crisis has direct implications for its security, economy, domestic politics, and diplomatic room for manoeuvre. The Russia–Ukraine war affects Black Sea security, grain routes, energy flows, NATO strategy, and the future of the European security order. Instability in Syria and Iraq directly touches Turkey’s borders through terrorism, migration, state collapse, Kurdish politics, and the presence of external military actors. The Iran–Israel confrontation and wider Gulf tensions shape Turkey’s calculations in the Middle East, from energy security to regional alignment. The Eastern Mediterranean remains a theatre of maritime competition, energy politics, and unresolved sovereignty disputes, while the South Caucasus links Turkey to questions of corridor politics, post-conflict reconstruction, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, and Central Asia. In other words, Turkey does not have the luxury of being strategically passive—its geography constantly pulls it into overlapping theatres of crisis. Its middle-power posture is therefore partly a response to exposure: Ankara must remain active, because surrounding instability would otherwise be managed by others, often in ways that could constrain Turkish interests.

Turkey is therefore pressured by its geography but also profits from it: the challenge for Ankara is to convert this exposure into influence without becoming overextended, and to use its location not only as a defensive shield but as a platform for selective, disciplined, and credible regional statecraft.

Yet the same geography that exposes Turkey to risk also gives it leverage. Turkey’s location allows it to act as a connector between spaces that are often treated separately: Europe and the Middle East, NATO and the Black Sea, the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Mediterranean and the Gulf, energy producers and energy consumers, and conflict zones and negotiation tables. This is precisely where geography becomes a middle-power asset. Turkey cannot impose order across all these spaces, but it can make itself relevant in many of them at once. It controls critical access to the Black Sea through the Straits, sits on major migration and energy routes, offers logistical corridors between Europe and Asia, and maintains political relationships with actors that often do not speak easily to one another. Its position allows Ankara to bargain, mediate, block, facilitate, and connect. This is why Turkey’s middle-power status should not be understood merely as a self-description or a diplomatic aspiration; it emerges from the interaction between geopolitical compulsion and strategic opportunity. Turkey is therefore pressured by its geography but also profits from it: the challenge for Ankara is to convert this exposure into influence without becoming overextended, and to use its location not only as a defensive shield but as a platform for selective, disciplined, and credible regional statecraft.

Normative Reach: Ottoman Memory, Sunni Islam, and Diaspora Networks

Turkey’s middle-power status is not sustained by military capacity, economic ties, or geography alone; it also rests on a set of normative and identity-based resources that allow Ankara to project influence through history, religion, culture, and diaspora mobilisation. Unlike many middle powers whose external influence is mainly institutional or economic, Turkey can draw on the symbolic geography of the former Ottoman space. This does not mean this Ottoman memory is uniformly welcomed or uncontested: in fact, it is received ambivalently in many regions and can generate suspicion (Yavuz 2016). Nonetheless, it does provide Turkish foreign policy with a recognisable historical vocabulary across the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, parts of the Caucasus, and beyond. Institutions such as TİKA, the Yunus Emre Institute, Turkish state media, educational organisations, and religious bodies have helped translate this historical-cultural geography into practical instruments of public diplomacy, especially in regions with which Turkey claims familiarity, shared memory, or civilisational proximity. Studies of Turkish cultural diplomacy in the Balkans identify TİKA, the Yunus Emre Institute, TRT and the Anadolu Agency as key instruments of Turkish soft power (Bechev 2012), while other work highlights Diyanet, Maarif, YTB and related organisations as part of Turkey’s wider cultural, religious and educational expansion in the region.

Under the AKP, religious diplomacy has become more visible and more institutionalised, with Diyanet playing a role not only in the provision of religious services to Turkish citizens abroad, but also in mosque construction, imam networks, religious education, and engagement with Muslim communities beyond Turkey’s borders.

Sunni Islam and Diyanet constitute a second and more explicitly religious component of this normative reach. Under the AKP, religious diplomacy has become more visible and more institutionalised, with Diyanet playing a role not only in the provision of religious services to Turkish citizens abroad, but also in mosque construction, imam networks, religious education, and engagement with Muslim communities beyond Turkey’s borders (Ozturk and Baser 2022). This matters for middle-power politics, because mosques and religious institutions can become durable social infrastructures through which Turkey sustains influence below the level of formal diplomacy. The Namazgah Mosque in Tirana, inaugurated in 2024 after construction financed by Turkey’s state-run Diyanet organisation, is a clear example: the mosque is one of the largest in the Balkans, and Diyanet is represented on its governing board. At the same time, this tool is not without limits. In Germany, for instance, concerns about foreign influence through Turkish state-employed imams have led to an agreement to gradually reduce the deployment of imams from Turkey and train more imams locally, showing that religious reach can also generate resistance in host societies. This duality is important, since Diyanet gives Turkey social access and legitimacy in some contexts, but can also generate suspicion where religion is seen as an extension of state influence.

The diaspora is the third pillar of Turkey’s normative middle-power toolkit. Ankara increasingly treats communities of Turkish origin abroad not merely as migrant populations, but as political, cultural, and diplomatic assets. The Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities states that Turkey has a diaspora of around seven million people, mostly in continental Europe, and describes its role as pursuing a multidimensional and inclusive diaspora policy aimed at preserving ties between the Turkish diaspora and their homeland. Since the establishment of YTB in 2010, diaspora engagement has become more systematic, encompassing cultural programmes, scholarships, legal and social support, institutional relations, and identity-preserving activities. For a middle power, this diaspora capacity is significant because it extends Turkey’s national presence into the domestic spaces of other countries through communities, associations, business networks, religious institutions, media ecosystems, and electoral mobilisation. Yet, here too, the asset is double-edged: Diaspora engagement can strengthen Turkey’s voice, create bridges with host societies, and support public diplomacy, but it can also deepen polarisation within diaspora communities and provoke concern in host states when it appears too closely tied to Ankara’s domestic political agenda. In middle-power terms, Turkey’s normative reach is therefore powerful but delicate, since it can amplify influence where historical memory, religion and diaspora networks generate trust, but it can weaken credibility if those same tools are seen as intrusive, partisan, or overly instrumentalised.

Energy and Critical Resources: From Import Dependence to Corridor Power

Energy is both one of Turkey’s clearest vulnerabilities and one of the most important sources of its middle-power relevance. Turkey is not an energy-rich country in the conventional sense. Its economy remains heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels, especially oil and gas, and the IEA notes that this dependence leaves the Turkish economy exposed to volatility in international energy markets. This weakness matters, since energy import dependence places pressure on the current account, magnifies the effects of exchange-rate volatility, and limits Ankara’s strategic autonomy in times of price shocks or supply disruption. Yet, as with other elements of Turkish middle-power status, the story is not only one of vulnerability. Because Turkey’s value lies less in the energy it owns than in the energy systems it can connect. Its geography places it between producers and consumers, between the Caspian and Europe, between the Middle East and the Mediterranean, and between emerging supply routes and European diversification needs. In this sense, Turkey’s energy role is not that of a dominant producer, but that of a corridor, connector, and potential hub. This is a classic middle-power advantage: namely, exerting influence through position, interdependence, and infrastructure rather than through outright resource control.

Ankara’s middle-power role is strengthened when it can position itself as the indispensable passage between regions whose direct connections are constrained by war, sanctions, geography, or mistrust.

This corridor role could become even more significant after the Iran war and the renewed anxiety over Gulf energy security. The disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has forced governments and markets to rethink alternative export routes for Middle Eastern oil and gas; it has been described Hormuz as the most critical global oil transit chokepoint, while noting that existing alternatives remain limited and vulnerable. In such a context, Turkey’s potential role in linking the Gulf, Iraq, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caspian and Europe becomes more strategically valuable. The Iraq–Turkey pipeline, possible future connections running from the Gulf through Iraq and Turkey, and broader corridor politics all strengthen Ankara’s relevance as Europe searches for diversification options. At the same time, the Caspian and Central Asian dimension is also growing in importance. The Middle Corridor already links China and Central Asia to Europe through the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus and Turkey, and analysts have pointed to the long-discussed Trans-Caspian pipeline as a possible way of moving Turkmen gas towards Azerbaijan and onward through the Southern Gas Corridor. These projects are politically and technically demanding, and they should not be treated as immediate solutions. Still, they do show why Turkey’s energy importance exceeds its domestic resource base: Ankara’s middle-power role is strengthened when it can position itself as the indispensable passage between regions whose direct connections are constrained by war, sanctions, geography, or mistrust.

The Eastern Mediterranean adds another layer to this picture, but also reveals the legal and political limits of Turkey’s energy ambitions. The region contains hydrocarbon resources and has long been shaped by overlapping maritime claims involving Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and other coastal actors. Turkey is not a party to UNCLOS, while Greece and Cyprus frame many of their claims through UNCLOS-based maritime entitlements; Ankara, by contrast, argues that maritime delimitation must reflect equity and cannot allow islands to generate maximal zones that effectively confine Turkey’s access to surrounding seas. This legal disagreement matters, because energy potential in the Eastern Mediterranean cannot be decoupled from maritime delimitation, sovereignty disputes, and the unresolved Cyprus question. For Turkey, the Eastern Mediterranean is therefore both an energy opportunity and a diplomatic constraint. It offers the possibility of participation in future hydrocarbon and energy-connectivity arrangements, but only if legal disputes and regional exclusion dynamics can be managed. Again, this is a middle-power pattern and Turkey has enough weight to prevent arrangements that ignore its interests, but not enough to unilaterally impose a comprehensive settlement. Its influence lies in its bargaining power, disruption capacity, and ability to make itself a necessary part of any durable regional energy architecture.

Finally, Turkey’s potential role in the energy politics of tomorrow is not limited to pipelines and hydrocarbons. Critical minerals may become increasingly important to its middle-power profile. The claimed rare earth element reserves in Beylikova, Eskişehir, reported at 694 million tons, have attracted considerable attention, although certification, processing capacity, and technological partnerships remain unresolved questions. Reports also identify other rare earth mineralisations in Turkey, including in the Konya and Sofular Malatya areas; these could become relevant as demand grows for green technologies, defence systems, batteries, electronics and advanced manufacturing. Here, too, the distinction between potential and power is crucial. Rare earth reserves do not automatically translate into strategic leverage; extraction, separation, processing and integration into global supply chains require technology, capital, environmental governance and trusted partnerships. However, if Turkey can develop these capacities, critical minerals could add a new layer to its middle-power status. They would allow Ankara to move beyond being an energy corridor and towards becoming a participant in the strategic supply chains of the green and digital transitions. In short, Turkey is energy-vulnerable today, but it is not energy-irrelevant. Its middle-power advantage lies in its ability to connect routes, mediate access, contest exclusion, and potentially convert critical resources into future strategic leverage.

The Limits of Turkish Middle-Power Status: Economy, Trust, and Democratic Credibility

If Turkey is to consolidate itself as a more disciplined, constructive, and widely trusted middle power, it will need to move beyond strategic agility alone. The ability to speak to multiple actors, build flexible coalitions, and operate across different geopolitical theatres is already one of Ankara’s main advantages. 

If Turkey is to consolidate itself as a more disciplined, constructive, and widely trusted middle power, it will need to move beyond strategic agility alone. The ability to speak to multiple actors, build flexible coalitions, and operate across different geopolitical theatres is already one of Ankara’s main advantages. Yet a more mature form of middle-power statecraft requires not only reach, but also reliability. Two constraints are especially important here. The first is economic fragility, with persistent inflation, currency volatility, external financing needs, and uncertainty over the investment environment limiting Turkey’s capacity to sustain long-term commitments and reducing the credibility of its wider strategic ambitions. The second is trust, which is closely connected to domestic democracy, the rule of law, institutional predictability, and the perception of political stability. Middle powers depend heavily on reputation and must therefore be seen not only as useful, but also as consistent, credible, and sufficiently predictable partners. Turkey’s challenge, therefore, lies not in whether it has the resources to act as a middle power, but in whether it can align those resources with the economic stability and democratic credibility needed to build broader, deeper, and more durable coalitions.

Economic Fragility: The Hardest Constraint on Turkey’s Middle-Power Ambition

The first major constraint on Turkey’s ability to act as a more confident and coalition-building middle power is economic fragility. Middle powers do not need to be economic giants, but they do need enough macroeconomic stability to be reliable partners, credible investors, and predictable contributors to regional initiatives. Turkey’s problem is not that it lacks economic scale: it has a large domestic market, a sizeable population, an active private sector, and extensive trade links. The problem is that these strengths are repeatedly weakened by inflation, exchange-rate volatility, dependence on external finance, and vulnerability to energy-price shocks. The IMF noted that Turkey’s inflation fell from 49.4% year-on-year in September 2024 to 30.9% in December 2025, which shows some progress, but also underlines how far Turkey remains from price stability. The OECD also described Turkey’s inflation as still elevated, noting that it remained at 32.9% in October 2025, while the World Bank expects disinflation to progress gradually rather than quickly. These figures matter for foreign policy, because inflation and currency instability reduce purchasing power, complicate defence and infrastructure planning, weaken investor confidence, and make long-term external commitments harder to sustain. A middle power that wants to build coalitions must be able not only to convene, mediate, and signal ambition, but also to contribute resources consistently. Turkey’s economy gives it reach, but its volatility limits the credibility of that reach.

Unless macroeconomic stability improves, economic fragility will remain the hardest ceiling on Turkey’s transition from an agile middle power to a more trusted and durable coalition-builder.

This is one of the two biggest weaknesses in Turkey’s middle-power profile. Coalition-building requires economic contributions in the form of inter alia development finance, reconstruction support, credit lines, infrastructure investment, trade facilitation, humanitarian assistance, defence-industrial financing, and the capacity to absorb short-term costs for long-term strategic gain. Turkey can do some of this selectively, especially through trade, construction, logistics, and defence exports, but it cannot yet do it at the scale, or with the stability and predictability, expected of a more consolidated middle power. Its dependence on imported energy is especially important. Recent reporting on IMF projections notes that higher oil and gas prices following the US–Israeli conflict with Iran pushed Turkey’s 2026 current account deficit forecast to 2.8% of GDP, while S&P-linked reporting has highlighted Turkey’s reliance on imported oil and gas as a major source of inflationary and balance-of-payments vulnerability. This means that geopolitical shocks in Turkey’s surrounding regions quickly become domestic economic constraints. Ankara may have the diplomatic ambition to connect coalitions across the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, but its ability to underwrite those coalitions materially is more limited. Put simply, while Turkey can often be a useful broker, corridor state, security partner, and political convenor, it is less consistently able to be a major financial provider. Unless macroeconomic stability improves, economic fragility will remain the hardest ceiling on Turkey’s transition from an agile middle power to a more trusted and durable coalition-builder.

Democratic Credibility and the Politics of Trust

The second major constraint on Turkey’s middle-power consolidation is political trust, and this is inseparable from the country’s domestic democratic trajectory. President Erdoğan remains the undisputed centre of political authority in Turkey, not only at the level of the presidency and ruling party, but also across much of the wider institutional field. The highly centralised presidential system has weakened parliamentary oversight and the separation of powers, while the judiciary, media environment, public bureaucracy, universities, municipalities, and regulatory bodies operate under strong executive pressure or political influence. This does not mean that Turkish society is simply passive, or that Erdoğan’s rule rests only on coercion. His political authority has always combined genuine mass support, electoral mobilisation, welfare distribution, conservative identity politics, and charismatic leadership with more coercive forms of institutional control. In other words, the system works through both consent and pressure. However, the balance between the two has increasingly shifted toward an uneven political arena in which opponents are not only defeated at the ballot box; they are often weakened before they reach it. The 2023 elections were competitive and Erdoğan won re-election, but OSCE observers also noted an uneven playing field, restrictions on freedoms, bias in public media, and problems of transparency in electoral administration. Furthermore, the European Commission’s 2025 Turkey report similarly underlined that the centralised presidential system remained in place and had seriously weakened the separation of powers along with the prerogatives of parliament.

Turkey has many of the material assets required for middle-power influence, but its democratic backsliding complicates the reputation it needs to turn those assets into durable partnerships. The treatment of opposition figures is a particularly glaring example. After the opposition’s major municipal victories in 2024, Freedom House reported that the government launched criminal investigations which led to the arrest of hundreds of opposition representatives in 2025, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was arrested shortly before being formally chosen as the CHP’s presidential candidate and later faced charges carrying extremely severe potential penalties. Human Rights Watch described İmamoğlu’s detention as part of a pattern of politically motivated investigations, while the Turkish government denied a crackdown and insisted that the judiciary is independent. These cases resonate internationally, because they suggest that political competition is shaped not only through elections, but also through judicial, media, and administrative pressure before elections take place. For a country that wants to be considered a responsible, constructive, and coalition-building middle power, this creates a serious trust deficit. If Turkey were able to strengthen the rule of law, judicial independence, media pluralism, and democratic predictability, its middle-power role would become more credible and more attractive. Without such improvements, Ankara can still act as an agile and influential middle power, but it will struggle to become the kind of trusted middle power that can build broader, deeper, and more durable coalitions.

Conclusion: A Middle Power Operating Below Its Potential

Turkey is already a middle power, but it remains a middle power that operates below its potential. Its status is not imaginary, rhetorical, or merely aspirational. It rests on tangible resources: one of NATO’s most significant military capacities, a rapidly developing defence-industrial base, a strategically indispensable geography, deep economic connectivity with Europe and adjacent regions, a visible presence in the Balkans, Africa, the Caucasus and the Middle East, and a set of cultural, religious and diaspora networks that extend Turkish influence beyond formal diplomacy. Few states of comparable rank possess this combination of assets. Turkey can speak to actors that do not easily speak to one another; it can operate simultaneously within NATO and across non-Western diplomatic spaces; it can project hard power in selected theatres while presenting itself as a broker, corridor state, security provider and political intermediary. These are not the characteristics of a passive or peripheral actor. They are the foundations of genuine middle-power agency.

Yet the central argument of this paper is that resources alone do not make a fully effective middle power. Middle-powerhood is not only about what a state possesses; it is about how coherently, credibly and consistently those resources are converted into influence. This is where Turkey’s limits become visible. Ankara has learned to benefit from strategic diversity, but it has not always translated that diversity into strategic clarity. It has multiplied its options, but not always reduced ambiguity. It has built military and diplomatic reach, but its economic fragility restricts the material depth of its external commitments. It has cultivated influence through identity, religion and diaspora networks, but these tools can also generate suspicion when they appear overly partisan or instrumentalised. It has positioned itself as an autonomous actor in a fragmented order, but autonomy without predictability can easily be read as opportunism.

A further regional constraint concerns Israel. If Turkey wants to become a more effective power in its own region, it cannot treat Israel only through the language of moral opposition, crisis diplomacy or episodic confrontation. This does not mean abandoning the Palestinian question or normalising every Israeli policy. Rather, it means developing a more disciplined balance policy: one that preserves Turkey’s normative position on Palestine, while recognising Israel’s structural weight in Eastern Mediterranean security, US regional strategy, technology networks, energy politics and Gulf normalisation. A consequential middle power must be able to compete, criticise and communicate at the same time. Turkey’s ability to shape outcomes in the Middle East will therefore depend partly on whether it can manage a calibrated equilibrium with Israel without losing credibility in the wider Muslim world or undermining its Western security ties.

A more influential middle power needs the capacity to contribute materially to the coalitions it seeks to build. Turkey can convene, mediate, connect and provide selective security assistance, but persistent inflation, currency volatility, dependence on external finance and vulnerability to energy shocks limit its ability to act as a stable economic underwriter. 

The two most serious constraints, however, remain economic weakness and democratic credibility. A more influential middle power needs the capacity to contribute materially to the coalitions it seeks to build. Turkey can convene, mediate, connect and provide selective security assistance, but persistent inflation, currency volatility, dependence on external finance and vulnerability to energy shocks limit its ability to act as a stable economic underwriter. Similarly, middle powers rely heavily on trust. They must be seen as useful, but also as reliable. Turkey’s domestic democratic backsliding, pressure on opposition actors, weak rule-of-law perceptions, and politicisation of institutions create reputational costs that travel beyond its borders. They do not erase Turkey’s influence, but they make that influence harder to consolidate.

There is also a temporal and institutional question. Erdoğan is currently a very powerful leader and has been central to the personalisation, visibility and tactical flexibility of Turkey’s middle-power status. Yet, precisely because so much of this activism has been associated with presidential authority, leader-to-leader diplomacy and personalised crisis management, the post-Erdoğan question remains unresolved. A durable middle power cannot depend only on one leader’s instincts, networks or risk appetite. It requires institutional capacity, bureaucratic memory, predictable decision-making, professional diplomatic depth, and policy continuity across governments. Turkey’s ability to sustain its middle-power role after Erdoğan will therefore depend on whether its status can be institutionalised beyond personal leadership. At present, that remains an open question.

This is why Turkey’s middle-power future depends less on acquiring entirely new assets than it does utilizing the assets it already has in a more disciplined manner. If Ankara can stabilise its economy, strengthen institutional predictability, restore democratic credibility, clarify the relationship between interests, morality and identity, manage a more balanced relationship with Israel, and reduce the gap between strategic flexibility and perceived inconsistency, its middle-power status could become far more durable. Turkey does not need to become a great power to matter. It needs to become a more trusted, coherent, economically resilient and institutionally continuous middle power. The paradox is therefore clear: Turkey has the geography, military capacity, diplomatic reach and historical depth to be one of the most consequential middle powers of the post-post-Cold War era. But until it resolves the internal and regional constraints that weaken its credibility, reliability and continuity, it will remain powerful enough to shape outcomes, but not stable enough to fully define them. 

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Distribution of emergency shelter supplies in Abyan, Yemen funded by the Yemen Humanitarian Fund (YHF). Credit: UN OCHA/Altawasul

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

In Yemen, increasing funding constraints on humanitarian operations have put millions of civilians in dire need of life-saving assistance amid overlapping crises. Acute food insecurity is a persistent issue, as recent reports from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) give a stark warning of conditions without urgent intervention.

According to the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Snapshot, one in two people within Government of Yemen (GoY) controlled areas are experiencing high levels of food insecurity, with percentages only expecting to rise or maintain as the conflict goes on. 3.6 million people are experiencing IPC phase 3 (crisis level), and 1.4 million people are experiencing even worse conditions at IPC Phase 4 (emergency). Such measures indicate “extreme coping strategies” where families are forced to sell their house, land, their last female animal, and beg due to the limited supply of food.

Food Insecurity Projection in Yemen | June – September 2026. Credit: IPC

As the crisis looms, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have “jointly called on the international community to urgently scale up funding for humanitarian food assistance, nutrition services, health, agriculture and resilience programming.” according to the spokesperson for the Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric.

The IPC projects that food supply conditions will only worsen through October and December 2026, with 1.8 million people being in phase 4, 3.6 million being in phase 3, and 3.2 million being in phase 2.

The ongoing conflict is driving heightened amounts of food insecurity due to intensifying macroeconomic pressures, making the local currency, the Yemeni Riyal, highly volatile due to “depleted reserves of halted oil exports”. Insecurity is also impacted by irregular salaries, limited labor opportunities, and a smaller and smaller household purchasing power each day.

Food Insecurity Projection in Yemen | October – December 2026. Credit: IPC

In April, the Houthis, which controls the northwest of Yemen and the capital of Sana’a, threatened to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. In the event of this strait being closed, the entire red sea and the Suez Canal would virtually be unpassable other than a few exports / imports between Saudi Arabia’s western province, Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea, which would likely still receive pressure at its ports. This would further increase food insecurity in Yemen, as humanitarian assistance is the only lifeline keeping Yemenis under famine levels. Without humanitarian assistance the situation would become increasingly lethal, making this call for action vital for the safety and vitality of Yemeni lives.

According to OCHA, at least USD 2.2 billion will be needed for assistance of twelve million people of the 22.3 million in need. Approximately 14.71 percent of such funding has been covered, leaving a funding gap of USD 1.8 billion. This is likely to become larger as the conflict becomes more costly, increasing food insecurity as the projections suggest.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

DRAFT REPORT From prototypes to capabilities – enabling new defence actors to scale up
Committee on Security and Defence
Mārtiņš Staķis

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Les États-Unis cherchent à redéfinir l'approvisionnement énergétique des Balkans occidentaux. L'objectif est de réduire la dépendance de la région à la Russie tout en renforçant le corridor énergétique reliant le sud à l'Europe centrale. Tour d'horizon pays par pays.

- Articles / Radio Slobodna Evropa, Énergie Balkans, USA Balkans, Relations internationales, Economie

Par Manuel Cortella
A peine sommes-nous arrivés à Zlatibor qu'une idée a germé dans nos esprits de marcheurs : étant donné que nous avons perdu cinq à six degrés en arrivant dans cette zone montagneuse – qui culmine à mille quatre cents quatre vingt seize mètres d'altitude en haut du mont Tornik –, y a-t-il moyen d'aller randonner quelque part, y a-t-il des chemins, sont-ils balisés ?
Notre première journée de visite nous apporte peu de réponses sur le sujet mais finit de nous convaincre (…)

- Libres opinions. L'espace de débat du Courrier des Balkans / Grand Bazar - Diaporama, Serbie, Blogs - Diaporama

Par Manuel Cortella
A peine sommes-nous arrivés à Zlatibor qu'une idée a germé dans nos esprits de marcheurs : étant donné que nous avons perdu cinq à six degrés en arrivant dans cette zone montagneuse – qui culmine à mille quatre cents quatre vingt seize mètres d'altitude en haut du mont Tornik –, y a-t-il moyen d'aller randonner quelque part, y a-t-il des chemins, sont-ils balisés ?
Notre première journée de visite nous apporte peu de réponses sur le sujet mais finit de nous convaincre (…)

- Libres opinions. L'espace de débat du Courrier des Balkans / Grand Bazar - Diaporama, Serbie, Blogs - Diaporama

The next meeting of the Committee on Security and Defence (SEDE) is scheduled to take place on Monday, 22 June 2026, 15.00 - 18.30 and Tuesday, 23 June 2026, 9.00 - 12.30 and 14.30 - 18.30 in Brussels (room SPINELLI 1G3).

Further information about the SEDE meetings can be found here.
_______________________
SEDE missions 2026:

• Taiwan - 30 March - 2 April 2026
• Poland and Czechia - 16-18 February 2026
• Ukraine - 5-6 February 2026

SEDE missions 2025:

• Djibouti - 27-29 October 2025
  
• Greenland - 15-19 September 2025
  
• Norway - 27-30 May 2025
• Moldova and Ukraine - 14-17 April 2025
  
• Bosnia and Herzegovina - 24-27 February 2025
• Israel and Palestine - 5-8 February 2025

SEDE missions 2024:

• United Kingdom - 28-30 October 2024
• Ukraine - 25-26 October 2024

SEDE Committee meetings' calendar 2026
SEDE Committee meetings' calendar 2025
EP calendar 2026
Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

On Wednesday at 9:15, several MEPs will hold a briefing for journalists as the implementation phase of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum begins on 12 June 2026.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

On Wednesday at 9:15, several MEPs will hold a briefing for journalists as the implementation phase of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum begins on 12 June 2026.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

By CIVICUS
Jun 8 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla on its mission to bring humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza with Musa Roshdy, a humanitarian activist who took part in the flotilla.

Musa Roshdy

On 15 April, the flotilla set sail from Barcelona, Spain. Israeli forces intercepted it in international waters on 29 April and detained 180 activists, holding them in a makeshift prison on a military ship for around 40 hours before leaving all but two of them in Crete, Greece. Two people on the Global Sumud Flotilla steering committee, Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Ávila, were taken to Israel and imprisoned until being deported on 10 May. The remaining boats regrouped and were joined by additional vessels. On 14 May, over 50 boats carrying 428 people set off from Marmaris, Turkey. The Israeli military intercepted the flotilla on 18 and 19 May, abducting all on board and taking them to Israel. Videos released on 20 May by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, showing zip-tied detainees as he taunted them, triggered a global backlash. After being processed through Ketziot Prison, most activists were deported to Turkey on 21 May.

What’s the Global Sumud Flotilla and why is it important?

The Global Sumud Flotilla was the second civilian maritime mission launched by a coalition of Palestinian solidarity organisations advocating for aid delivery to Palestinians in Gaza and the end of Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza. While it was the Global Sumud Flotilla’s second mission, this was the 39th sea-based attempt to break Israel’s illegal blockade. The Spring 2026 flotilla was organised in direct response to a call for aid put out by civil society organisations on the ground in Palestine.

On 15 April, we sailed from Barcelona with several hundred activists from dozens of countries including Brazil and Spain, determined to deliver aid to Palestinians facing severe deprivation. Our mission highlighted a crucial reality: if everyday civilians from all over the world can mobilise and get this close to establishing a humanitarian corridor, then governments can certainly do it. What’s missing is not ability or infrastructure, but political will. The flotilla represents civilian solidarity with Palestinians and a direct challenge to the illegal blockade. We were prepared for interception after Israel arrested the previous flotilla last year, but not for the scale of violence that followed.

How were you kidnapped?

I was kidnapped by the Israeli navy in the interception that occurred on 29 April, when we were sailing in international waters over 600 miles from occupied Palestine, off the coast of Crete. They attacked us in the middle of the night. We had little warning before military motorboats approached us at high speed. They pointed rifles at us and announced on a megaphone that they were the Israeli navy, they were boarding our vessel and we needed to go inside immediately or they would shoot us.

That night, the Israeli military stopped 22 of the 54 boats in the flotilla en route to Gaza. There’s no legal precedent for military action so far from Israel’s sea borders. We were in the European Union’s search-and-rescue zone, under Greek jurisdiction. But instead of protecting us, Greek coastguard ships observed Israel’s raid and then received us after we were tortured for two days.

Israel’s legal claims were absurd. They accused us of illegal entry into Israel when we were sailing to Gaza and were kidnapped en route. Most of the 180 activists were released in Greece, but two of us were abducted and brought before Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court in Israel on charges with no legal basis.

This violated fundamental principles of international law. You cannot take military action in international waters so far from your territory. You cannot abduct foreign nationals without due process. You cannot torture detainees. Yet all this happened.

Israel acts with impunity because the international community has failed to hold it accountable.

What did you endure in detention?

It was clear from the start they were trying to denigrate us for standing with Palestinians. I was forced onto my hands and knees and held in uncomfortable positions for hours. Soldiers stole my shoes, then stomped on my feet with their combat boots. I was left in just leggings and a tank top. We were held in makeshift prisons built from shipping containers. The soldiers deliberately manipulated the temperature, wetting the floor to freeze us at night, then forcing us outside under intense heat during the day. I experienced hypothermia both nights, as confirmed by a doctor who was imprisoned with me. When comrades tried to give me sweaters, soldiers took them away. At one point, a soldier pointed a rifle at my comrade and threatened to kill him for offering me a jacket in the cold.

Soldiers banged on containers and shone huge lights while we slept to keep us awake. They threw flashbangs and used force to drag people into solitary confinement. On the last day, they shot activists at point-blank range with rubber bullets. They took photographs and videos that showed us collecting our medications when they kidnapped us, but then denied us access to our medications once we were on the prison boat. Sixty-one people went on hunger strike. The food they provided, mostly bread, was insufficient to feed the rest of us, even with a third of us not eating. This cruelty is consistent with what Palestinians experience in Israeli detention, though what we experienced pales in comparison with the cruelty they face.

The Israeli military intended to deter the humanitarians sailing to deliver aid to the people of Gaza, but they were unsuccessful. People around the world recognise that Palestinians in Gaza still have an overwhelming need for aid, legal protection and solidarity. Many activists who were detained with me on 29 April set sail again a few weeks later on 14 May and were intercepted off Cyprus just days later on 18 and 19 May.

What must change internationally?

What governments must do is clear but consistently absent. They must condemn the kidnapping of their citizens. They must impose targeted sanctions against Israeli officials, not humanitarian activists. They must denormalise diplomatic relations with Israel. For instance, Croatia’s leader just refused to approve Israel’s new ambassador to Croatia due to Israel’s current policies.

The most fundamental step is an arms embargo. If we stop supplying weapons to Israel, it cannot do what it is doing. Last year, civil society in Belgium won a court case preventing the transit of military equipment to Israel. France recognises Palestine but still supplies weapons. Governments know these mechanisms exist but lack the political will to prioritise Palestinian lives over strategic interests.

Western states are also complicit in other ways. Some of our torturers had US accents. Another had a German accent. Western governments allow their citizens to join the Israeli military, which commits war crimes and kidnaps and tortures their nationals, then lets them return home without consequence.

Instead of holding Israel accountable, many western states are restricting the space for pro-Palestinian activism. In the UK, Palestine Action faced an absurd terrorism designation for blocking weapons manufacturing. In Germany, authorities banned the watermelon symbol as antisemitic.

On 19 May, as the Israeli military was kidnapping humanitarians in international waters, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned four leaders of the Global Sumud Flotilla, calling humanitarian aid delivery ‘pro-terror’, and blocking all access to financial institutions in the USA. The mechanism used by the USA to sanction humanitarian activists was recently deemed illegal by a federal judge when applied to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It criminalises support for Palestine and conflates it with support for terrorism.

What lies ahead for activism for Palestinian rights?

Our detention and torture were intended as a deterrent, but they failed. In practice, they had the opposite effect. Frontline work exacts a real human cost and people need time to recharge. But activism will continue because Palestinians in Gaza are still facing genocide.

What this moment teaches is that rights exist because we enact them. When everyday people learn from Palestinian courage how to stand up, call atrocities atrocities, and demand basic decency and access to life itself, movements spread across borders. People will continue to pursue humanitarian work, join future flotillas and resist authoritarian restrictions on civic space. Tactics will adapt, new symbols will emerge – as when the watermelon was adopted because Palestinians couldn’t display their flag – but the work won’t stop.

Credit: D.V. Bakke

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

GET IN TOUCH
Global Sumud Flotilla/Instagram
Humans of the Global Sumud Flotilla/Instagram
Musa Roshdy/Instagram

SEE ALSO
USA: sanctions weaponised against human rights CIVICUS Lens 01.Jun.2026
Gaza: ceasefire an illusion CIVICUS Lens 16.Mar.2026
Palestine: ‘The EU cannot position itself as a defender of human rights while being one of Israel’s primary arms markets’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with 7amleh 26.Mar.2026

 

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Picture alliance/Anadolu/Selcuk Acar. Annalena Baerbock, President of the UN General Assembly and former German Foreign Minister.
 
Germany’s humiliating defeat in the race for a UN Security Council seat reveals the price of a foreign policy increasingly seen as hypocritical abroad.
 
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday elected Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe to the 15-member U.N. Security Council for two-year terms starting on January 1, 2027.
 
Germany, which had lobbied hard for a seat, came third for the two places contested by the Western European and Others Group, with 104 votes, against 134 for Portugal and 131 for Austria.-- Reuters

By Marcus Schneider
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jun 8 2026 (IPS)

This is the downfall of a diplomatic superstar. Germany’s defeat in the election to the UN Security Council is the consequence of a foreign policy that has proven disastrous in recent times, failing to uphold either the values or the interests of the Federal Republic.

The fact that the second-largest contributor to the UN has been punished so severely by Portugal and Austria highlights a global loss of trust that had not yet been fully realised in political Berlin.

‘We are seen as someone who defends the rules-based order; as an advocate of international law’, Foreign Minister Johann Wampold lectured just hours before the election. And in doing so, he revealed the gulf between Germany’s self-perception and the way it is perceived internationally. It is quite clear that on this very issue – the extent to which the Federal Republic actually stands up for binding rules and international law – there has been massive damage to its reputation, which is now, for the first time, resulting in political consequences.

International law à la carte

Germany’s global alienation can be traced very precisely to the Israeli war in Gaza, which stirred up international passions like hardly any other conflict. The problem here is not merely the stance perceived as highly one-sided in large parts of the world.

It is the palpable discrepancy with Germany’s conduct in Ukraine and with the general self-image of a country that likes to parade through the world with a particularly raised moral finger.

If in one instance – quite rightly – one loudly condemns war crimes and calls on the whole world even more loudly to do the same, yet in the other case remains silent, grants the perpetrators diplomatic and political cover, and even supplies them with weapons (even though the crimes are far more serious by all objective standards), it is hardly surprising to be accused of double standards and hypocrisy.

The damage to Germany’s reputation is all the more severe because the country was regarded for decades as a safe bet in foreign policy. Like hardly any other state, the Federal Republic stood for strengthening multilateral institutions.

First, the former capital of West Germany, Bonn, then Berlin, supported the development of an international judiciary. Precisely as a lesson from its own history and in its own well-understood interest as a country at the heart of a continent once ravaged by war, Germany committed itself with vigour and generosity to peace and the balancing of interests.

It is only in recent times that the ‘reason of state’, now invoked like a mantra, has emerged, towering above all else as a foreign-policy creed imbued with an almost sacred significance.

For a long time, incidentally, it was possible to adopt a stance on the Middle East conflict that did justice both to Germany’s historical responsibility towards Israel and to the legitimate concerns of the Palestinians and Arabs. It is only in recent times that the ‘reason of state’, now invoked like a mantra, has emerged, towering above all else as a foreign-policy creed imbued with an almost sacred significance.

Foreign countries in particular, which do indeed take note of the largely self-referential German discourse, may well ask: does this raison d’état actually have any moral limits? Or does it also cover up war crimes, ethnic cleansing and what even highly reputable experts and institutions describe – to put it mildly – as genocidal conditions?

For the raison d’état is, after all, not a product of realpolitik interests, but is proclaimed as a kind of higher morality, and thus as a lesson from German history that other countries should, please, understand. Many there see rather a German failure to draw universal lessons from its own history, possibly even a kind of unwelcome historical continuity.

The self-portrayal as a ‘champion of international law’ – which was, after all, the main argument put forward for the now-failed German campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council – also seems rather odd in light of a series of statements made by the Chancellor. For instance, Friedrich Merz thanked Israel for doing the ‘dirty work’ with regard to the war of aggression against Iran — which, according to the overwhelming majority of legal opinion, is illegal under international law.

He described the legal assessment of the kidnapping of the Venezuelan head of state as ‘complex’, whilst explicitly refraining from offering lectures on international law regarding the recent Israeli-American war of aggression against Iran. As opposition leader, he had expressed outrage over the arrest warrant for the alleged Israeli war criminal Netanyahu, who is accused of serious crimes against humanity. After all, he claimed, the International Criminal Court had supposedly been established solely to ‘hold despots and authoritarian leaders to account’.

One gets the impression of a Chancellor who – speaking for a significant portion of the country’s political and media elites – seeks to replace the rule of law with a kind of higher moral order. Under this system, the supposedly ‘good’ – that is, ourselves and our democratic allies – are effectively permitted to do anything. They are no longer bound by any rules.

It is international law, if it exists at all, à la carte. Above all, it marks a departure from Germany’s decades-long belief in the civilising of international relations through their codification. From the perspective of many states that have withheld their vote from Berlin, the Federal Republic is now too unreliable a partner for the highest body of the global legal order.

Time for a reassessment

The election defeat is not merely a humiliation; it is accompanied by a real loss of influence and prestige for what is, after all, the largest and economically strongest country in the European Union. In future international crises, Berlin will now find itself at the back of the room. For Germany, this should be a moment of self-reflection at best.

What values and interests should guide our policy? In a phase of extreme geopolitical upheaval, the rise of the Global South and the US distancing itself from the world order it once imposed, Germany is dependent not on less, but on more and on resilient international cooperation.

Clearly, the international legal order is not perfect. The institutions of collective security are frequently paralysed, and, as in the past, there will be dilemmas where interests and values make it necessary to strike a balance between politics and law.

However, a complete descent into a dog-eat-dog world – where military might is the only thing that counts, where wars of aggression are launched at will, where warfare is becoming increasingly brutal, and where the international community is sinking into global cultural conflicts – cannot be in Germany’s interests.

Such a world would, sooner or later, also threaten the enduring peace within the EU. As a country with few natural resources, highly integrated economically and dependent on global trade flows, the Federal Republic is reliant on a reasonably functioning world order in which fundamental principles apply even across the boundaries of political regimes.

It is disconcerting to see how much the German government, particularly its conservative wing, celebrates its friendship with an Israeli government in which war criminals and right-wing extremists call the shots.

The restoration of Germany’s lost soft power will also necessitate a reassessment of German Middle East policy. Hardly anyone expects a triumphant switch to the camp of Palestine’s supporters. But a more measured and balanced approach would certainly be appropriate. It is disconcerting to see how much the German government, particularly its conservative wing, celebrates its friendship with an Israeli government in which war criminals and right-wing extremists call the shots.

The fact that, in the global perception, one aligns oneself so closely with a group that is knowingly threatening to turn its own country into an international pariah state defies any rational explanation. The costs of this stance are very real, and they are damaging to Germany.

The embarrassing defeat at the UN may not be a one-off blunder in this matter. In a few years’ time, the International Court of Justice will rule on the case of genocide in Gaza. Further trouble looms here. For those who, for ethical reasons, cannot bring themselves to resolve the completely untenable conditions in the occupied territories through a solution acceptable to the international community, Germany’s well-understood self-interest should tip the balance by then at the latest.

For unlike so many conflicts where Berlin’s contribution is limited to expressing deep concern, the Federal Republic would actually have influence here. So far, this influence has been used very successfully to block any European pressure on a government that wants a great deal, but certainly not a sustainable peace. As soon as that changes, two things would be on the rise again: peace — and Germany’s tarnished reputation.

Marcus Schneider heads the FES regional project for peace and security in the Middle East, based in Beirut, Lebanon. Previously, he worked for the FES as head of the offices in Botswana and Madagascar, among others.

Source: International Politics and Society, Brussels

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Report say illegal logging, hidden ownership structures, and weak transparency laws are depriving governments of badly needed climate and biodiversity financing. Credit: Financial Transparency Coalition

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Jun 8 2026 (IPS)

A new report has found that billions of dollars linked to illegal deforestation are flowing through global supply chains, with secrecy around land ownership and company records helping timber, soy, and beef products enter international markets unchecked.

The report, Financial Secrets of the Forests: How Secrecy Fuels Deforestation in Brazil and Cameroon, was released by the Financial Transparency Coalition in partnership with the Center for Economics and Finance for Latin American Development (CEFILAT) on May 26, this year, examined forest loss and illicit financial flows in Brazil and Cameroon, two countries that hold some of the world’s largest tropical forests.

Researchers behind the report say illegal logging, hidden ownership structures, and weak transparency laws are depriving governments of badly needed climate and biodiversity financing. They argue that while countries have passed anti-deforestation laws, the lack of public access to company ownership records allows those benefiting from environmental destruction to remain hidden.

The report estimates that trade mispricing linked to timber exports cost Cameroon an average of US$289 million every year between 2013 and 2023. In Brazil, unexplained discrepancies in timber exports amounted to around US$214 million over a similar period.

When asked whether the report argues that financial secrecy is central to illegal deforestation and what the biggest obstacles were faced while trying to identify the real beneficiaries behind timber, soy, and cattle businesses in Brazil and Cameroon, one of the report’s lead authors, Matti Kohonen, Executive Director of the Financial Transparency Coalition, told Inter Press Service (IPS) in an exclusive interview that they weren’t able to identify the beneficial owners of these businesses despite using the best available data, including satellite GIS data.

“For the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil, which represents a fifth of the country’s total deforestation, we identified hundreds of thousands of plots of land which had been illicitly deforested from 2010 to produce soy and cattle but could only find the ID of the plots and, in some cases, companies behind them, but not their beneficial owners. When we asked the local authority for this information for the top plots of land, they replied this could not be provided due to privacy concerns despite this being a clear example of a public interest request,” he said.

“For Cameroon, on the other hand, we focused on timber and were able to map the main timber concessions (Forest Management Units (FMUs) and Sales of Standing Volume (SSVs), described in the report) and the companies that had these concessions were mostly identifiable in the datasets, but we could not find out using the best data whether these were shell companies owned by foreign firms and also could not identify their beneficial owners.”

According to him, Cameroon does have a BO database, but this is not publicly accessible.  Matti said that there is some data on mining and fossil fuel companies through the EITI (extractive industries transparency initiative), but forestry is not in their scope.

“When we asked for this information from the Cameroonian government, we didn’t get any reply, not even about the updated list of sanctioned timber companies, which we actually found were still being given concessions as late as July 2025.  Some of these sanctioned timber companies were available online, but not for the most recent years and there was no historical data that we found through earlier reporting by Pulitzer.”

The findings suggest that existing international regulations are failing to stop products linked to deforestation from entering global markets. Matti said that the biggest enforcement gaps in producer countries or importing countries are the inability to identify the companies and their beneficial owners responsible for deforestation and the lack of transparency in the supply chains which prevent tracing products to the source.

“This is a good study by WRI highlighting these issues. Another key problem is the lack of political will to tackle these issues. This is reflected in our report in the case of Cameroon, whose authorities didn’t provide us with any data, as well as the state of Mato Grosso, which refused to reveal the beneficial owners of the top plots of land linked to illicit deforestation despite the freedom of information legislation in Brazil.”

Matti added that the lack of publicly available beneficial ownership registries is a key problem as well, preventing NGOs and journalists from finding out those benefitting from the illicit clearing of forests.

“From the importing countries, the lack of political will to stop products from deforested land from entering global markets is also a major problem, especially now in major importing countries like China and Vietnam, which keep importing these products from companies that have been denounced and sanctioned in the past, as we see in Cameroon. That’s why we’re saying that without financial ownership and supply chain transparency it’s largely impossible for initiatives such as EUDR to succeed.”

The report argues that forests are not only being destroyed by chainsaws and fires, but also by opaque financial systems that make it difficult to identify who profits from deforestation.

“Financial and land ownership secrecy is a key driver behind illicit deforestation,” the report states.

In Brazil, investigators focused heavily on Mato Grosso, a state known as one of the world’s largest hubs for soy and cattle production. Satellite data showed that from 2010 to 2023, vast stretches of land were cleared without proper permits. Researchers found that 48 percent of soy production areas and 15 percent of intensive grazing pasture overlapped with plots lacking deforestation permits.

The environmental impact has been severe. Illegal cattle grazing linked to deforestation in Mato Grosso produced an estimated 502 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between 2001 and 2023. Soy cultivation linked to illegal forest clearing generated another 250 million tonnes of emissions during the same period.

Researchers say tracing responsibility is extremely difficult because ownership information is often hidden or inaccessible.

Brazil maintains land and environmental registries, but public access to the real individuals behind companies and land holdings remains restricted. Investigators said even official requests under Brazil’s transparency laws failed to reveal the identities of people linked to illegally cleared land.

One case study highlighted a massive ranch in Mato Grosso called Fazenda Santa Silvia, where more than 3,000 hectares were allegedly cleared illegally between 2022 and 2023. Investigators connected the property to companies involved in soy and cattle production and traced supply chain links to meatpacking giants including JBS and Marfrig.

“We only analysed Mato Grosso but this state we strongly believe reflects the reality across Brazil, so the fact that such a large percentage of land for soy and beef has been illicitly deforested is really concerning. Afterwards, some of these plots get permission to grow soy/pasture but the literature suggests they’re the minority and doesn’t replace the fact that they were illicitly deforested in the first place,” Alfonso Daniels, lead author, said.

“Our data appears to reflect global research done by NGOs, such as a report from the NGO Forest Trends a few years ago that found that at least 69% of tropical forests cleared for agricultural activities such as ranching and farmland between 2013 and 2019 was done in violation of national laws and regulations, with other research showing similar percentages,” he added.

The report says such investigations currently depend on time-consuming fieldwork by journalists and environmental groups because public databases do not reveal beneficial ownership details.

The Congo Basin rainforest, where Cameroon is located, is the second largest rainforest system in the world after the Amazon. Cameroon lost more than 100,000 hectares of forest in 2025 alone, producing an estimated 130 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

Researchers found large discrepancies between the value of timber exports reported by Cameroon and the import figures recorded by trading partners such as China, Vietnam, and European Union countries. Between 2013 and 2023, the trade gap reached US$1.2 billion with China and US$760 million with Vietnam.

The report says this may point to underreporting of exports to evade customs duties and taxes.

Cameroon has introduced reforms requiring companies to disclose beneficial ownership information to tax authorities. However, the registry is not public, making it difficult for watchdog groups and journalists to track who ultimately controls logging companies and forest concessions.

Investigators also found that some companies sanctioned for illegal logging continued receiving logging permits years later. One table in the report lists several firms that were granted new concessions even after being penalized by authorities.

Environmental groups say weak enforcement in importing countries is adding to the problem.

Although the European Union, United Kingdom, and United States have laws banning illegal timber imports, the report argues that companies linked to deforestation continue accessing major markets because ownership structures remain hidden.

The European Union’s new Deforestation Regulation, expected to take effect in late 2026, will ban products linked to recently deforested land. But researchers warn that enforcement will remain difficult unless governments make ownership records fully public.

The report has pitched for public beneficial ownership registries, stronger supply chain transparency, public databases on environmental crimes, and a global asset registry that would reveal who owns forests, farmland, and logging concessions worldwide.

Researchers argue that tackling climate change and biodiversity loss will require more than promises to protect forests. They say governments must also confront the financial secrecy systems that allow environmental crimes to remain profitable.

The report estimates that money lost through illegal logging, tax evasion, and hidden financial flows could help close major global funding gaps for forests, biodiversity, and climate action.

When asked why Cameroon and Brazil both have beneficial ownership registries, yet public access remains limited and why governments continue to resist transparency around land and company ownership despite the environmental stakes, Daniels said that the laws that established these beneficial ownership registries are narrow in their scope concerning the use of the data, often such registries are made in compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recent changes in its recommendations 24 and 22 that now require government-run and centralised beneficial ownership registries for anti-money laundering purposes.

“In the case of Cameroon, they are on the FATF grey list and establishing a high-quality and centralised government-run registry gets them off that list, and that’s one of the motivations to establish a BO registry, but there is no requirement to make it public under existing frameworks.

“Only in the case of extractive industries defined as mining and oil/gas do we have the requirement, as Cameroon is a signatory to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and they should comply with its requirement for public access, and some data on these is publicly accessible, but forestry is not considered an extractive industry and is outside of its scope,” said Daniels, adding that also, public pressure thus far from inside the country has not made this data fully public for any other reason.

“In the case of Brazil, the federal tax authority runs the beneficial ownership registry established before the FATF rule to comply with the OECD information exchange provisions from 2016 onwards, largely for tax collection reasons,” Daniels said.

According to him, the data is shared also with anti-corruption authorities to comply with later FATF rules.  However, Daniels said that this data is not made public.  “As Brazil is not a member of the EITI, it also does not make this data public even in the scope of mining, oil and gas companies.  There isn’t enough internal pressure from any section of society to make BO registries public, even if this could tackle illicit logging that is a major political concern for the current presidency.”

According to Kohonen, illicit financial flows linked to illicit deforestation can arise at different stages.  “If logging takes place without the proper licences, it is considered illegal, and the whole value of timber is therefore illicit.  It is important to ensure that sanctions and fines are promptly administered to deter anyone from illegal logging, but currently it is still far too commonplace that land is illegally logged, as up to 30% of all timber comes from land that was illegally logged.  This is an enforcement gap, where you can automatically issue sanctions and fines to companies that, based on satellite data, have deforested without adequate licences,” said Kohonen.

“Another stage is at the point of exporting (some 10-15% of all timber in Brazil is exported; the domestic consumption is quite high, while in Cameroon, most of the timber is exported), so at this point, the customs authorities could be checking if the timber is correctly valued at the point of export and if there are irregularities in customs declarations that may then lead to trade mispricing (unexplained value gaps between the export at the source and import prices at the destination country).”

He added that finally, there are also issues with tax authorities, where mispriced timber is often also a case of tax evasion, if this leads to paying less in VAT, royalties or export taxes.  Also, according to Kohonen,  companies may misdeclare their corporate taxes if they don’t report adequate sales of timber or wood products or if they don’t declare their products grown on deforested land correctly (e.g., soy/beef).

“Finally, companies may engage in profit-shifting activities, where they move taxable profits to offshore tax havens where they are taxed at a lower rate or may attract tax exemptions, or profits could be moved to tax havens through intra-firm transfers that are mispriced (e.g., mispriced internal financing or internal use of brand or IP).  These all contribute to making deforestation and deforestation-linked commodities more profitable and less likely to be detected.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Written by Steven Blaakman.

The Iran conflict and the civil war in Sudan have sparked fears that the EU could face a repeat of the 2015 ‘migration crisis’. This crisis led the EU to allocate more resources to secure its borders, adopt measures such as the pact on migration and asylum, and pursue agreements and arrangements with third countries to boost returns and prevent irregular migration. Several countries near Sudan and Iran are currently hosting more refugees than in 2015. By working together with third countries, the EU has achieved some success in reducing irregular migration, but the arrangements have been criticised for their lack of transparency and impact on human rights. At the same time, many EU countries struggle to process the volume of asylum applications and returning irregular migrants in large numbers. Against this backdrop, the EU is developing new legislation on migration. However, it may be challenging for EU countries to reach a consensus on granting temporary protection. Additionally, regularisation is not typically granted to new asylum applicants. The Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation will apply from 1 July 2026, establishing special rules for crisis situations.

Read the complete briefing on ‘How prepared is the EU for another migration crisis?‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Mehrere beliebte Ausflugsbahnen haben ihre Preise deutlich erhöht. So kostet eine Retourfahrt im Matthorn Alpine Crossing 24 Franken mehr als vor zwei Jahren. Andere Bahnen haben in den vergangenen vier Jahren noch stärker an der Preisschraube gedreht. Eine Übersicht.