Threads — tracked situations

Turkey is converting a decade of indigenisation into a self-reinforcing defence-industrial engine: $30bn of military spending in 2025 (22% routed through the national defence-industry fund), a record $8bn in export contracts signed in the first three days of SAHA 2026, and 2025 exports topping $10bn — a 48% jump that puts Ankara within reach of its top-10-exporter target for 2028. The sprint shows across every domain at once. Baykar unveiled three new kamikaze drones (K2, Sivrisinek, Mizrak) to swarm under TB2 command; Aselsan fielded Tufan USVs and the Kılıç family of kamikaze underwater drones plus Steel Dome electronic-warfare nodes; Roketsan scaled its Alka laser to 10kW as Steel Dome's hard-kill layer; and the Ministry of National Defence claimed a domestic-propellant breakthrough for the Yıldırımhan long-range ballistic missile. Two large exercises anchored the showcase — EFES-2026 closed with a record 50 nations and the first Bayraktar TB3 sorties from TCG Anadolu, and Sea Wolf-2/2026 put 125 naval assets across four seas with the first live use of the PIRANA kamikaze USV. Demand is following supply: Gulf states are buying Turkish air defence as US deliveries lag, CANiK's M3 FALCON counter-drone gun is shipping to Pakistan and Azerbaijan, and Ankara is selling itself as a co-production ecosystem rather than a catalogue. The binding constraints are economic (high inflation, currency volatility against a $30bn topline) and capability gaps the firms themselves flag — NATO-dependent high-end air defence and slipping timelines on Kaan, Altay and the MUGEM carrier.

TPAO is converting Turkey's energy-hub policy into an international production portfolio. The company targets one million barrels of oil equivalent per day through Kirkuk participation, offshore drilling, and partnerships spanning Africa, the Caspian, and Europe.

Two and a half years into Mehmet Şimşek's orthodox-policy turn, Turkey's disinflation is being knocked off course by the US-Israel war on Iran. Annual CPI, which had fallen from a 2022 peak near 85% to roughly 30.9% in March, ticked back up to 32.37% in April and 32.61% in May as the Strait of Hormuz closure pushed energy inflation to ~47% in a country that imports ~99% of its gas and ~93% of its oil. The central bank under Governor Fatih Karahan held the policy rate at 37% and abandoned its forecast band, raising its end-2026 inflation target from 16% to 24% (and end-2027 from 9% to 15%); markets now price year-end CPI near 29% and USD/TRY around 51.6. Q1 GDP slowed to 2.5% YoY (from 3.4%) with industry contracting 0.8% and exports down 12.7%, while the March current-account deficit hit a three-year-high $9.6-9.67bn on the energy bill. Yet domestic readings are not uniformly grim — consumer confidence rose to a 14-month high of 85.8 in May — even as housing eats 29.3% of household budgets and authorities fined 1,200+ firms $8.6m for price-gouging. All eyes are on the data-heavy June and the central bank's June 11 rate decision, where most expect a hold at 37% and a minority a hike to 40%.

The court-driven CHP leadership rupture is hardening into an organizational split. Ozel's New Party is building local structures from resigning CHP members, while the two camps dispute whether hundreds of thousands have left the former main opposition.

The PKK process is moving from party consultations toward a framework law. Speaker Numan Kurtulmus is coordinating cross-party talks before the summer recess, but the draft still has to reconcile reintegration provisions with opposition to any measure framed as a general amnesty.

Wildfire response has moved into a national accountability phase. The Justice Ministry is investigating 44 fires across 16 provinces, with six suspects arrested and nine under judicial supervision as heat and wind continue to amplify ignition risk.

Escalating attacks on merchant vessels have pushed Ankara from warnings into temporary traffic restrictions through the Turkish Straits. Turkey is invoking its gatekeeper role while pressing Russia and Ukraine for a reciprocal moratorium on attacks against commercial shipping.

The EU has appointed Raffaele Fitto as a new Cyprus envoy while the UN prepares another diplomatic push. Turkish Cypriot authorities reject an EU mediation role and insist on sovereign equality, so the added European channel may increase institutional activity without narrowing the core negotiating gap.

Turkey's rupture with Israel has hardened into a sustained confrontation fought on three fronts at once: the sea, the Gaza crossings, and Al-Aqsa. The Global Sumud Flotilla, intercepted near Crete on 30 April, regrouped and relaunched from Marmaris on 14 May with 54 boats and activists from 70 countries; one released participant has now given a first-person account of 52 hours on the Israeli landing craft Nahshon alleging beatings, a stabbing and a 'torture container' at Ashdod. On aid, Ankara — the largest provider with 100,000+ tons delivered — accuses Israel of holding Turkish trucks of baby formula and shelter materials for weeks, and Israel's COGAT has ordered the WFP to sever ties with the Turkish charity IHH, cutting support to 166,000 Palestinians. On Jerusalem, Türkiye and seven other states condemned settler incursions at Al-Aqsa and demanded recognition of Jordan's custodianship, and the dispute went personal when Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz attacked Erdoğan and Interior Minister Çiftçi over a 'liberation of Jerusalem' remark. This is a rhetoric-and-pressure war, not a military one: no troops face off, but trade is severed, consulates are under review, and Erdoğan is bidding to lead the Muslim world against Israel.

Eighteen months after the December 2024 fall of Bashar al-Assad and the installation of Ahmed al-Sharaa's HTS-rooted government, Turkey has become the dominant outside power in Syria — converting a decade of military intervention and refugee burden into reconstruction, energy and security leverage. The energy spine is now live: Erdoğan announced that Turkish-transited Azerbaijani gas (1.2 bcm/yr from Shah Deniz) is restarting Syrian power plants, and Energy Minister Bayraktar pitched an 'electricity version of TANAP' linking Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Bulgaria atop a $30bn Turkish grid upgrade. The corridor play is the strategic core: Ankara and Damascus revived the 2009 'Four Seas' rail/road/pipeline project (Foreign Ministers Fidan and al-Shaibani in Ankara), Sharaa pitched it at an EU summit in Cyprus drawing $28bn+ in 2025 investment deals, and Transport Minister Uraloğlu detailed a Hejaz Railway revival via Aleppo-Damascus-Jordan toward Oman plus the 1,200km Iraq Development Road — all framed as land alternatives to the Hormuz/Red Sea routes disrupted by the Iran war. Militarily Turkey hosted ~50 Syrian troops and 502 Libyans (both rival factions) at EFES-2026 near İzmir — the reconstituted Syrian army's first-ever foreign exercise — and runs joint MIT-Syrian intelligence operations (10 ISIL suspects detained, Assad-era chemical stocks being cleared with OPCW). Two frictions cut against the narrative: Ankara is policing the story at home — MIT demanded prosecution of journalist Abdullah Bozkurt over an exposé of its jihadi ties, and is prosecuting a former officer over Syrian-defector kidnappings — and the unresolved SDF/Kurdish question runs through the March-2025 integration deal and unconfirmed Mazlum Abdi–Öcalan contacts via a 'channel prepared by Turkey.' With 634,000 of 1.6M returnees coming from Turkey and Erdoğan offering to broker Hezbollah-Lebanon files with Washington, Turkey's Syria role is widening from security guarantor into regional power-broker.