By Michael Tanchum
With record-breaking arms exports globally, Turkey’s growing market share in the Arab monarchies holds the potential to greatly expand Ankara’s role as a security provider across the Middle East and North Africa. At the same time, Turkey faces growing competition from Israel and India, which have significantly expanded their own weapons sales to the Arab monarchies, notably the UAE and Morocco. Deepening defense cooperation in ways that Turkey has not, Israel and India have engaged in the co-development of weapons systems with Arab defense firms and have established local weapons manufacturing in the Arab world. The next phase in the competition for the MENA weapons market share, as well as the regional geopolitical clout that accompanies it, could be determined by Saudi Arabia, raising Ankara’s geopolitical stakes in securing a sizable purchase of Turkish weapons by Riyadh.

Photo source: Defense Visual Information Distribution ServiceBACKGROUND: In 2024, the Turkish defense industry posted yet another record-breaking year for exports, with overseas arms sales jumping 29% over the previous year. According to the Secretariat for Defense Industries (SSB), Turkey’s 2024 defense and aerospace exports totaled $7.2 billion. Three Turkish defense firms are among the ‘Top 100 arms-producing and military services companies’ list published annually by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Turkey’s Aselan, manufacturer of advanced military products for air, land and maritime forces, achieved the 54th spot in the SIPRI rankings, while drone-maker Baykar and Turkish Aerospace Industries ranked 69th and 78th respectively. Increasing its global market share through the sale of armored vehicles, drones, warships, and electronic warfare systems, the Turkish defense industry services about 180 countries. While Turkish arms sales provide Ankara with geopolitical clout within the NATO alliance and across several geographical theaters, Turkey’s growing sales in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region merit particular attention, as recent exports to Arab monarchies hold the potential to expand Turkey’s strategic partnerships and widen its role as a regional security provider.In late January 2025, Turkish officials suggested that a major arms deal would soon be concluded with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the world’s second largest arms importer. It has been reported that Ankara expects to sign a $6 billion arms deal with Riyadh during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s state visit to the kingdom in March 2025. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited his Saudi counterpart in Riyadh on January 28, 2025.
The 2025 deal builds upon Saudi Arabia’s 2023 agreement to buy high altitude drones from Baykar, but would be much larger in scope, including Turkey’s Altay main battle tank, missile defense systems, and perhaps even Turkey’s Kaan fighter jet, which passed its first test flight last year but still is far from operational readiness.
The Turkish-Saudi arms deal would be the capstone to Turkey’s prior advances in arms sales to the Arab monarchies, outside its strategic partnership with Qatar. One year ago, Aselan opened an office in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which had been a staunch geopolitical rival to Turkey for much of the previous decade. Signifying the marked turn around in relations between Ankara and Abu Dhabi, Aselan signed a cooperation agreement with the UAE defense firm Calidus. In the western end of the MENA region, Morocco has been increasing its arm purchases from Turkey, with Rabat having ordered 200 Cobra II armored vehicles from the Turkish defense firm Otokar in 2024. In early 2025, Morocco took delivery of its first consignment of Baykar’s Bayraktar Akıncı combat drones. Rabat’s 2024 purchase of these sophisticated high-altitude, long endurance drones builds upon its 2021 purchase of 13 Bayraktar TB2 drones from the company. Morocco’s arms purchases represent an important geopolitical nod toward Ankara, given Turkey’s relationship with Morocco’s neighbor and bitter regional rival Algeria.
IMPLICATIONS: Despite Turkey’s impressive expansion of its arms exports to previously more estranged Arab monarchies, the sales also indicate the limits of Turkey’s appeal and the power of competing arms exporting countries to provide a compelling alternative. Morocco is a case in point. While Baykar established a subsidiary in Morocco to provide maintenance and spare part services for its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the scale of the company’s investment shows no indication of joint Turkish-Moroccan co-production or co-development. In contrast, Morocco has developed a deep and multi-variegated arms purchasing relationship with Israel including co-production.
Even before the December 2020 renormalization of relations between the two countries, Israel was Morocco’s third largest arms supplier, covering 11% of its military needs. The relationship has expanded considerably since, with Israel’s BlueBird Aero Systems announcing in 2024 that it had established a production plant in Morocco. Israel’s second largest defense firm by revenue, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) holds a 50% share in BlueBird, which supplies a variety of UAV systems to Morocco including the SpyX loitering munition and the vertical take-off and landing WonderB and ThunderB systems. In 2022, Morocco bought IAI’s MX air defense system for about half a billion dollars.
Israel’s three defense firms in the SIPRI rankings each placed in the top 50, far above their Turkish counterparts. Israel’s Elbit achieving the 27th spot while IAI and Rafael ranked 32nd and 44th respectively. Morocco has turned to Israel as an alternative to France, reportedly ordering 36 of Elbit’s Atmos 2000 self-propelled artillery systems in February 2025 to replace the French-made Caesar artillery systems after the French systems experienced technical failures. Similarly in 2024, Morocco purchased two Ofek 13 surveillances satellites to replace the two satellites developed for Morocco by Airbus Defense and Space France and Thales Alenia Space France. In terms of drones, the Moroccan military already uses Elbit’s Hermes UAVs as well as IAI’s Heron UAVs and Harop loitering munitions.
Israel is not the only weapons exporter that is keeping the Turkish defense industry looking over its shoulder. Israel’s strategic partner India has also started production of weapons systems in Morocco. Tata Advanced System, the weapons manufacturing subsidiary of Indian conglomerate the Tata Group, entered into a 2024 agreement with Morocco to produce its Kestral armored combat vehicle in an industrial zone in the Casablanca area. Tata’s Advanced Systems’ premier product, the Kestral is a WhAP 8X8 (Wheeled Armored Platform) developed in partnership with India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation for optimal for survivability, mobility, and firepower. Tata’s Moroccan factory will have an initial production capacity of 100 combat vehicles per year. With the Moroccan Armed Forces slated to receive a total of 150 Kestrals over time, while the remainder of the infantry fighting vehicles are slated for export in Africa potentially undercutting Turkey’s armored vehicle sales on the continent. A rising weapons exporter, India also has three defense firms that have placed in the SIPRI rankings, at 43rd, 67th, and 94th place respectively. If these companies follow Tata Advanced Systems example and position Morocco as India’s gateway to the African arms market, Turkey could lose significant African market share to India.
Morocco is a bellwether of an expanding trend among the Arab monarchies of the MENA region. Following the 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized relations between the UAE and Israel, the Emirates’s largest defense firm EDGE came to two agreements in 2021 to jointly develop advanced drone defense systems and unmanned naval vessels for anti-submarine warfare. Elbit similarly established a subsidiary in the UAE in 2021, entering into a 2022 contract to supply the Emirati Air Force with anti-missile and electronic warfare systems. Rafael opened its Abu Dhabi office in 2023, but the company had already established a joint venture with the UAE in 2021 for the co-development of Artificial Intelligence and big data technologies for the civilian market. Although Emirati-Israeli cooperation in weapons co-development slowed since the October 2023 outbreak of the Gaza War, cooperation continues to expand and points to the durability of the relationship. In January 2025, EDGE bought a 30% stake in the Israeli defense firm Third Eye, which develops drone detection technology used by the Israel Defense Forces and certain NATO members. At the same time, EDGE invested $12 million in a new, majority EDGE-owned joint venture with Thirdeye Systems to help Thirdeye Systems expand into new markets. The UAE and India are eyeing the development of a similar relationship.
CONCLUSIONS: The Turkish defense industry’s 2024 record-breaking exports are a testament to the success of Ankara’s 25-year effort to make Turkey into a global player in 21st century arms manufacturing. Turkey’s emergence as a significant weapons supplier has also been assisted by the decisive battlefield successes of the Turkish systems deployed in the Syrian and Libyan Civil Wars as well as the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. As an analysis published by Turkey’s SETA Foundation observed, “The program to build up the manufacturing capacities of Turkey’s defense industry developed as a correlate of Turkey’s strategic imperative to function geopolitically as an independent actor.” With enhanced strategic autonomy, Turkey has expanded its geopolitical footprint in the Middle East and North Africa, becoming a primary actor in Syria and Libya.
At the same time, the expansion of Israeli and Indian weapons sales to the Arab monarchies of the MENA region and especially the advent of co-development and local production in Morocco and the UAE reveals an apprehension about rising Turkish power in the region and a desire among the Arab monarchies to preserve their own autonomy. With Saudi Arabia yet to establish formal diplomatic ties with Israel, the manner and extent to which Ankara becomes a weapons supplier for Riyadh will shape the future strategic contours of Turkey’s role as a security provider in the MENA region.
AUTHOR BIO: Prof. Michaël Tanchum teaches international relations of the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Navarra, Spain and an associate fellow in the Economics and Energy at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. He is also a Senior Associate Fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Studies (AIES) and an affiliated scholar of the Centre for Strategic Policy Implementation at Başkent Universty in Ankara, Turkey (Başkent-SAM) and the NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies in Singapore. @michaeltanchum
By Vali Kaleji
With the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, the long-standing Turkish-Iranian rivalry has intensified in the region. Ankara will make the most of the challenges that Iran has suffered in the Middle East, advancing its geopolitical and economic goals and ambitions in the region to the detriment of Iranian interests. Tehran fears that Turkey will now be emboldened to make further headway in the South Caucasus to the detriment of Iranian interests and that it will disseminate Pan-Turkism and incite ethnic unrest and divisions in the Azeri and Kurdish areas in the northwest of Iran. Ultimately though the two countries prefer caution and seek to contain their rivalry. Turkey and Iran have a shared interest in limiting the scope of their rivalry, foreclosing military escalation.
BACKGROUND: Shiite Iran and Sunni Turkey have maintained relations relation without direct military confrontation for nearly 400 years, with their common border unchanged since the signing of the Treaty of Zuhab in 1639. Notwithstanding, Turkish-Iranian rivalry has been a constant in the Middle East and in the Caucasus. Since 2011 the geopolitical competition between Iran and Turkey has largely played out in Syria, where Ankara supported the rebellion and Tehran the Assad regime. Turkey opposes the agenda of the so-called Axis of Resistance, groups aligned with and/or backed by Iran operating across the Middle East. Ankara’s support for Hamas has been only rhetorical and it has not displayed any sympathy for Hezbollah in Lebanon. On November 21, 2024, after a missile attack targeted a cargo ship in the Red Sea, Ankara sent 6 warships to counter and suppress the Yemeni Houthis, Iran’s proxies. Although “The Astana Process” was launched in 2017 at the initiative of Iran, Russia and Turkey to reduce tensions in Syria, the competition and differences between Iran and Russia with Turkey persisted.</>
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the United States, Israel and Turkey for the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, after a lightning offensive by Sunni Islamist rebels toppled the regime last year. He said in a public speech that “there should be no doubt that what happened in Syria was plotted in the command rooms of the United States and Israel. We have evidence for this. One of the neighbouring countries of Syria also played a role, but the primary planners are the US and the Zionist regime”. There was no doubt that the neighbouring country that the Iranian leader had in mind was Turkey. Indeed, Iranian analysts largely agreed that the evolving situation in Syria would lead to a new phase of regional competition between Tehran and Ankara.
Turkey has demonstrated that it intends to play a decisive role in shaping the future of Syria and it stands to reap the benefits of the reconstruction of the country. Iran meanwhile, whose overall economic expenditure in Syria is valued at around $20-30 billion, can no longer expect to enjoy any access to Syria. Moreover, the loss of Syria deprives Iran of crucial transit corridors. The creation of the Iran-Iraq-Syria corridor was one of Iran's strategic goals to strengthen its influence in the Middle East region and secure access to the Mediterranean. But with the fall of the Assad regime this transit corridor is no longer viable. Turkey, meanwhile, is seeking implement a 17-billion-dollar “Development Road Project,” which consists of two rail and land routes, in cooperation with Iraq. This transit project could potentially bloc Iran's attempts in transit and transportation in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and the Eastern Mediterranean.
IMPLICATIONS: Iran is also concerned about the revival of the Qatar-Turkey pipeline project with the transfer of Qatar's natural gas through a pipeline that passes through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria to Turkey and brings it to the European market. Although this pipeline faces important challenges – it would notably pass through currently Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria where Turkey is yet to assert its authority and secure the disarmament of the PKK affiliated Kurdish militia – its realization can be an alternative not only for the export of Iranian gas to Turkey, but also for the export of Russian gas to Europe. There is no doubt that the revival of the Qatar-Turkey pipeline project would increase Turkey’s bargaining power in the pricing of imported gas from the two competing powers Iran and Russia.
Moreover, Tehran fears that Turkey, after the fall of the Assad regime, will be emboldened to make further headway in the South Caucasus to the detriment of Iranian interests. Specifically, there is a concern in Iran, as well as in Armenia, that Azerbaijan, encouraged and supported by Turkey, will launch an attack on the Syunik province in the south of Armenia in order to realize the Zangezur Corridor and a direct land connection to Nakhichevan.
Iran is strongly opposed to the Zangezur Corridor due to the threat of blockage of the common border with Armenia – without the supervision and control of Armenia – and such an attack, if it were to take place, would obviously have far reaching regional ramifications, further tipping the balance of power in the South Caucasus in favour of the Baku-Ankara axis. A realization of the Zangezur Corridor as a part of the Middle Corridor, parallel to the realization of the “Development Road Project” between Iraq and Turkey, will inevitably reduce Iran's transit advantages in the region. Further, the realization of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline, along with the revival of the Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline project represents an important challenge for Iran's gas exports in the region.
Another major, indeed existential concern for Iran is that Turkey may seek to disseminate Pan-Turkism and incite ethnic unrest and divisions in the Azerbaijani and Kurdish areas in the northwest of Iran. Such concerns have been fuelled by the December, 2024 launch of the Persian-language service of Turkey's state television channel (TRT). Tehran is particularly sensitive, not least since the director of the TRT media Mehmet Sobacı on October 14, 2024 said “We are to open the TRT Persian channel at the end of this year. We must disturb Iran; we must disturb Iran!” Although he was subsequently dismissed, the controversial comments sparked debate and was met with strong criticism in Iran. In what looked like a direct response to the Turkish move, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Peyman Jebeli on January 21, 2025 announced that a Turkish section of Press TV will start broadcasting.
CONCLUSIONS: With the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, Iran has lost a crucial strategic ally in the Middle East and its longstanding regional policy has suffered challenges. Turkey, meanwhile, has gained the strategic upper hand and is advancing its geopolitical and economic goals and ambitions in the region which worries Iran. But the two countries prefer caution and seek to contain their rivalry. This was on display when İbrahim Kalın, the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) on February 8 visited Tehran for discussions with senior Iranian security officials, including Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Akbar Ahmadian and Minister of Intelligence Seyed Esmail Khatib. The discussions focused on Syria, the war in Gaza and on countering the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Daesh (ISIL or ISIS), and other terrorist groups, as well as other shared security threats. This suggests that Iran is aware of the threat to security by the PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurds. For this reason, Iran has welcomed Abdullah Ocalan’s call to disarm and dissolve the PKK. Such a move would have dangerous repercussions in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and possibly also in the Kurdish regions in Iran.
Ankara will try to make the most of the challenges that Iran has suffered in the Middle East. In addition, Turkey feels that it has the advantage in the new round of competition with Iran. But Turkey and Iran nonetheless recognize that they have a shared interest in limiting the scope of their rivalry, foreclosing military escalation.
Vali Kaleji is based in Tehran, Iran, and holds a Ph.D. in Regional Studies, Central Asia and Caucasian Studies.
By Emil Avdaliani
Armenia and Turkey are itching closer to full restoration of bilateral relations. While the normalization process remains vulnerable to external pressures and domestic political constraints, the factors driving the engagement today are structural, and both parties clearly recognize the benefits of full restoration. However, this outcome will nonetheless require strong political leadership and a shift in domestic public opinion in both countries – none of which are guaranteed. The most likely outcome is a pattern of managed normalization, slow, cautious, and transactional. Under this model, Turkey and Armenia would gradually deepen technical cooperation, possibly culminating in consular-level relations and partial border reopening, particularly for commercial traffic.

Photo source: iravaban.net
BACKGROUND: In an unprecedented move, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan recently argued that for the Armenian government the “international recognition of the Armenian Genocide” is no longer among its foreign policy objectives. Diplomatic engagement between the two neighbors, though modest in scale, has gained institutional shape over the past four years. Since late 2021, Turkey and Armenia have maintained a formal channel of communication through designated special envoys—Serdar Kılıç for Turkey and Ruben Rubinyan for Armenia—tasked with exploring avenues for normalization. Even though the dialogue has remained low-profile, the efforts have yielded tangible outcomes. Direct charter flights between Yerevan and Istanbul resumed in 2022 and both sides have agreed on the need to improve cargo transportation, even if full land border opening has not yet occurred. While diplomatic recognition has yet to materialize, the process is no longer as far-fetched as before.
Armenia looks to diversify its foreign policy away from its traditional dependence on Russia. Ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Yerevan has been exclusively linked to Moscow for provision of security and through close commercial ties. But the defeat in the war against Azerbaijan in 2020 and the subsequent complete loss of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in September 2023 pushed Yerevan to reconsider its foreign policy, and to seek diversification. This involved a certain distancing from Russia and engagement with other global actors, the EU, the United States, India and surprisingly also Turkey. Armenia’s calculus is clear. By achieving a meaningful improvement of relations with Ankara, Yerevan wants to limit pressure emanating from Azerbaijan. Given the strategic nature of the relations between Ankara and Baku, Yerevan hopes that a friendly Turkey will serve as a certain disincentive for Azerbaijan to push against Armenia.
Improved ties with Turkey would also be economically beneficial for Armenia. Since the 1990s, Armenia has had only a limited connection with the outside world. Closed borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan left Armenia with only Georgian and Iranian ones open for trade. This north-south connectivity has hampered Armenia’s development of its commercial and industrial potential. An open border with Turkey would allow Armenian products to reach the large Turkish, and potentially the European market.
Meanwhile, there is also a growing willingness in Turkey to improve relations with Armenia. While Armenia is hardly of paramount importance for Turkey in economic terms, better ties with Yerevan would nonetheless enhance Ankara’s position in the South Caucasus, adding leverage in Turkey’s competition with Russia. Moreover, normalization with Armenia could offer Turkey the coveted land connection with Azerbaijan. The transit route through Georgia is well-developed but is still far longer than the one through Armenia’s southernmost province of Syunik, which separates Azerbaijan proper from its autonomous region of Nakhchivan. The route through Armenia would provide Turkey with a much shorter link to Azerbaijan. Improved ties with Yerevan would allow Ankara to achieve this goal diplomatically.
Russia -- although Turkey’s rival in the South Caucasus – nonetheless agrees with Baku’s and Ankara’s vision of the corridor through the Syunik province. Obviously, Russia has its own interests, such as the operation of the corridor under the oversight of its troops, and Yerevan disagrees with Moscow, which adds another layer to the tensions in Russian-Armenian relations. The corridor would allow Russia and Turkey to have a long circuitous railway connection via Azerbaijan.
IMPLICATIONS: The normalization with Armenia opens new avenues for regional connectivity. Turkish policymakers view the South Caucasus as a gateway to Central Asia, the Caspian region, and potentially China via the Middle Corridor—a logistics and trade route that bypasses Russia and Iran. In this context, improved relations with Armenia could facilitate the development of multimodal transport infrastructure and integrate it further into EU-Asia connectivity.
The reopening of the Turkish-Armenian border would not only benefit Armenia’s trade and connectivity with the broader region, but would also offer Turkish businesses access to new markets in Armenia and potentially further into the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). As a member of Russia-led EAEU, Armenia would enable eastern Turkish provinces like Kars and Iğdır to benefit from cross-border trade, transit infrastructure, and logistics services.
While Turkey has announced its readiness to finalize the improvement of relations with Armenia, it has also signaled that Yerevan will first have to conclude a peace treaty with Azerbaijan. Recent statements do indeed suggest that the two countries are close to signing a peace agreement. Baku and Yerevan have confirmed that the work on the document has been concluded and that the two sides are closer than ever to reaching a historic agreement. However, there are still disagreements about the corridor through Armenia and the Armenian constitution, which calls for unification with Nagorno-Karabakh.
Nevertheless, Baku and Yerevan have taken major steps to toward the peace agreement which in turn would open the door to Turkey to pursue bilateral engagement with Yerevan without prejudicing its strategic relationship with its ally Azerbaijan. Arguably, once a peace deal has been reached between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the efforts to reopen the Armenia-Turkey border and restore diplomatic ties will be accelerated.
Yet political, psychological, and logistical barriers will still have to be overcome. While Baku has officially refrained from opposing the Turkey-Armenia talks, it maintains significant leverage over the process. Turkish policymakers are traditionally sensitive to Azerbaijani perceptions and have repeatedly stated that normalization with Armenia will not come at the expense of their ties with Baku. This creates a structural ceiling for Turkish diplomatic engagement, one that is unlikely to be breached unless Armenia and Azerbaijan reach a final peace settlement that clarifies the status of the Zangezur Corridor and other contentious issues.
Domestic political dynamics in both Turkey and Armenia further complicate the picture. In both capitals, members of the political elites continue to harbor skepticism toward bilateral engagement. In Yerevan in particular, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan faces domestic constraints. While he has demonstrated willingness to explore normalization, his domestic political opposition accuses him of capitulation to Turkey and Azerbaijan, particularly in the wake of the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Deficient infrastructure poses an additional challenge. Even if the two sides agree to reopen borders or launch joint trade initiatives, new physical infrastructure will be necessary to facilitate such interaction. Decades of closed borders have resulted in minimal customs cooperation, and underdeveloped trade logistics. Reviving these systems is going to require significant investment, time, and coordinated planning.
CONCLUSIONS: The emerging dialogue between Turkey and Armenia is not the result of spontaneous goodwill, but rather of shifts in the regional power balance coupled with economic imperatives. In comparison with previous attempts to improve relations, this time practical steps have been made, aided by geopolitical situation in the region. Over the next months, several plausible scenarios could emerge. The most likely outcome is a pattern of managed normalization—slow, cautious, and transactional. Under this model, Turkey and Armenia would gradually deepen technical cooperation, possibly culminating in consular-level relations and partial border reopening, particularly for commercial traffic. This would allow both governments to claim progress without provoking political backlash or over-committing to full diplomatic recognition. Such a path could potentially be underpinned by parallel Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations or even formats which would include other regional actors.
A more optimistic scenario would involve a formal diplomatic breakthrough following a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This would remove the principal strategic obstacle from Turkey’s calculus and could lead to the exchange of ambassadors, the full reopening of land borders, and large-scale investment in regional infrastructure. In this context, Turkey could position itself as an economic gateway for Armenia helping it to break its isolation and attract diversified foreign capital.
Overall, the geopolitical situation in the South Caucasus is favorable to a definitive improvement of Armenian-Turkish relations and the two parties clearly recognize the benefits of full restoration. However, this outcome will nonetheless require strong political leadership and a shift in domestic public opinion in both countries – none of which are guaranteed.
AUTHOR BIO: Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a scholar of Silk Roads. He can be reached on Twitter/X at @emilavdaliani.