ISTANBUL—The plaintive cry of the muezzin provides background music for political discourse on Friday evening at an open-air restaurant on the Bosphorus. The air is cool, the fish is fresh, and the conversation is vibrant.
“I know something bad is going to happen in the next year,” says one business executive, who like others I met with this past week spoke not for attribution. “I just don’t know what it is. As Turks, we can only have a mindset and not a plan.”
The half dozen others around the table—former diplomats and current business leaders—nod their assent. The discussion is lively on matters of urgency to them all. They speak with the authority of a centuries-old culture navigating a new world.
They speculate on how hard Israel will hit Iran. We debate the wisdom of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s embrace of Hamas and growing condemnation of Israel. We discuss, as well, the contradictions as Turkey navigates the war in Ukraine. There, Turkish-made drones are killing Russian soldiers, even as Erdoğan meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who in turn supports Turkey’s economy with cheap gas, oil for its refineries, and Russian tourists for its hotels.
Turkey, a country of some 85 million people, sits at the middle of a rough neighborhood. To its north are Russia and Ukraine, with which it shares the Black Sea coast. To its immediate east lies Iran, and to its south are Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and the Mediterranean. “Life would be easier but less interesting if Canada and Mexico were our neighbors,” an energy company executive says.
Conversations about what US officials call the world’s greatest geopolitical threats since the Cold War feel more urgent in Istanbul than from the safer distance of Washington. Our evening dinner ended my week of similar exchanges on the sidelines of the Atlantic Council’s Regional Conference on Clean and Secure Energy.
Turkish business leaders heap praise upon Mehmet Şimsek, their treasury and finance minister, who has calmed runaway inflation and convinced Erdoğan that low interest rates only made the situation worse. They are happy that Şimsek’s increased rates have reduced inflation in the past year to 49 percent as of September from its high above 85 percent in October 2022. They estimate that inflation, as long as Şimsek remains in office, will settle to 25 percent next year. They compare notes on how to best design businesses for Turkey’s economic and political roller coaster.
During my week in Istanbul, I found that even discussions about the upcoming US elections were well-informed and not academic. A financial company leader told me that he would prefer Vice President Kamala Harris as US president because the escalating dangers of the world require someone who would be more willing to deftly navigate them in cooperation with allies and other multilateral bodies.
However, a retired diplomat volunteered that former US President Donald Trump’s vaunted unpredictability, and his penchant for strongman relationships with the likes of Erdoğan, might be a better tonic to avoid war and serve Turkish national interests.
Small talk can provide large insights.
My dinner companions spoke of the growing number of Turks, and also Chinese, who are buying property in neighboring Greece at bargain prices to gain access to a European Union (EU) “golden visa.” With Turkey’s long-standing EU membership dreams on ice, they see it as an affordable way to gain some of the EU’s many advantages by proxy.
They discussed Turks’ unique talent at navigating ambiguity, underscored when one interlocutor showed me a list of the 250 largest global construction companies and where they operated. Turkish firms were perhaps second only to China in terms of how many operate in some of the world’s dodgiest geographies.
National security geeks in Washington refer to Turkey as a “swing state”—meaning that given its size and shifting loyalties, where it lands has outsize consequences. That’s particularly true as a result of its significance in several key and contested regions: the Middle East, the Black Sea, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and, yes, even Europe.
Where does this “swing state” belong? Astride the European Union, NATO, and the United States? Or is it among the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, along with more authoritarian-leaning powers?
The rough consensus among those with whom I spoke during the week was that Turkey firmly belongs in the West. But with the EU refusing membership to the country and the United States restricting what military products it will sell Turkey, economic and political reality requires some hedging.
Conversations in Istanbul inevitably turn to Israel. Opinions differ on Erdoğan’s embrace of Hamas and escalating criticism of Israel. While I was in Istanbul, Erdoğan told Turkish media, “Israel is the most concrete threat to regional and global peace. . . . It is essential that Russia, Iran, and Syria take more effective measures against this situation.”
Over lunch at one of Istanbul’s many new restaurants in its bustling commercial buildings, one Turkish interlocutor with a long history in government and business showed me a map on his phone that he said demonstrated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s true aim of creating “greater Israel.” Its depicted borders took up all of Lebanon and swallowed a large swath of Saudi Arabia and most of Syria.
When I dismissed that far-fetched possibility, noting that Israel’s small population had its hands full with Gaza and the West Bank, he frowned and said that I needed to take the concern more seriously.
However, another business leader told me that, absent the Palestinian casualties, Israel’s weakening of Hamas, decapitation of Hezbollah leadership, and challenges to Iran overlap with Turkey’s interests. “It’s not in our interests to have a nuclear Iran,” the business leader said.
Turkish business leaders regret a world in which so much of their business is circumscribed by politics. Erdoğan has sanctioned Israel, the United States and EU have sanctioned Russia and Iran, and Russia’s war in Ukraine has made it unsafe to continue many Turkish projects in that country.
Yet somehow Turkish companies continue to expand their reach, turn profits, and navigate uncertainty. Instead of wringing their hands about the dangerous world that surrounds them, Turks seek its opportunities.
“Hope keeps us alive,” one energy executive told me. “And resilience keeps us in business.”
Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X: @FredKempe.
This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.
Further reading
Image: The Moon rises behind the July 15 Martyrs’ Bridge, known as the Bosphorus Bridge, in Istanbul, Turkey, September 17, 2024. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
