As the first month of the Israel-US-Iran conflict draws to a close, the ripple effects are already shaking global trade networks. The Strait of Hormuz, a strategic chokepoint through which nearly 20% of the world’s oil passes, has emerged as a frontline of this confrontation. Airstrikes on energy facilities and key ports across the Gulf are ringing alarm bells for major European and Asian buyers, underscoring that what began as a regional conflict now threatens to evolve into a structural global crisis. “The war in the Middle East is creating a major energy crisis, including the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. In the absence of a swift resolution, the impacts on energy markets and economies are set to become more and more severe,” stated IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. In this atmosphere of growing insecurity, Türkiye, with its strategic geography and deep diplomatic experience, stands out as a potential architect of stability.
Türkiye’s Central Role in Regional Connectivity
The war against Iran by the U.S. and Israel has reverberated far beyond the region, aptly conceptualised as the ‘Gulfisation’ of war. Air strikes targeting critical energy infrastructure, disruptions to port operations, and the closure of the maritime artery, the Strait of Hormuz, have fuelled uncertainty and sharply increased insurance premiums. Brent crude last week exceeded $110 per barrel, while European LNG futures have jumped by 30% amid fears of a total blockade in the Gulf.
The near-zero flow of oil by sea, coupled with limited alternatives on land, exposed global vulnerabilities, and the world witnessed how the weaponisation of connectivity could bring spillover effects on global trade networks. However, this scenario was not novel. Such impacts became starkly evident after October 7, when Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen blocked the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea by targeting hundreds of vessels. Suez Canal revenues were down nearly 40%, severely straining Egypt’s economy, while Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat declared bankruptcy after losing its primary revenue streams. These disruptions—once exceptional, now systemic —have exposed the profound fragility of supply chains anchored to maritime chokepoints. In this context, Türkiye-centred corridors offer a degree of redundancy and diversification that enhances their strategic appeal, particularly under prolonged regional instability.
Given the last wave of escalation in the region, Türkiye-centred trade corridors are emerging as critical. The Türkiye-Iraq Development Road Project, starting from the Al Faw Port in the Persian Gulf, traversing Iraq by road and rail, into Türkiye, and onward to Europe, with potential synergistic links to Central and East Asia via the Middle Corridor, offers a fast, cost-effective, and reliable alternative. With a transit time of just 15 days from the Gulf to Europe, it significantly outperforms the 35-day Cape of Good Hope route and the 22-day Suez route, while reducing logistics costs by approximately 20% compared with existing sea-land options.
A New Security Paradigm
Nevertheless, any regional connectivity initiative, no matter how well-financed or technically advanced, depends on a stable and predictable security environment. For the Development Road to compete with other Gulf corridors, it needs more than asphalt and ports—it needs a new regional security architecture. The Middle East is at a turning point: as Gramsci wrote, “the old is dying, and the new is struggling to be born.” The steady decline of U.S.-centred security and ongoing division among regional actors have created a vacuum now filled by ad hoc alliances and localised escalations, from Red Sea maritime disruptions to militia activity across Iraq and Syria.
Responding to these trends, a more pragmatic, diplomacy-driven framework is beginning to take shape, rooted in multilateral and minilateral engagement. Since October 7, Türkiye has intensified coordination with Gulf actors not only bilaterally but through structured platforms. For example, the reactivation of Türkiye-Qatar strategic dialogue mechanisms has focused on Gaza’s reconstruction financing; high-level engagement with the UAE has expanded to include regional de-escalation files; and, perhaps most significantly, Iraq has been repositioned as an active diplomatic stakeholder through quadrilateral coordination meetings involving Türkiye, Iraq, Qatar, and the UAE on the Development Road Project. Collectively, these interactions reflect an emerging architecture of issue-based coalitions designed to collectively manage risk.
The Development Road itself is a manifestation of this logic. Extending from the Grand Faw Port to Türkiye’s transport and industrial networks, the project is not merely a logistics corridor but a mechanism for embedding interdependence. By aligning Iraqi reconstruction priorities with Gulf investment capital and Türkiye’s manufacturing and transit capabilities, it creates a distribution of economic gains that incentivises stability. States integrated into such a framework are structurally more inclined toward risk-averse behaviour, as disruption directly translates into shared economic loss, which recently amounted to more than $15 billion for Gulf oil producers.
Economic interdependence can boost stability, but it only works if states protect strategic infrastructure from non-state threats and geopolitical tensions. In fragmented places like Iraq, where armed groups operate outside of central control, interdependence alone cannot guarantee corridor security. The Development Road’s stabilising impact depends not just on economic benefits but also on investments in government capacity, security coordination, and risk mitigation.
This is where the idea of a “new security paradigm” shifts from theory to action. Regional stability will not come from rigid alliances or outside guarantors alone. Instead, it relies on dense networks of economic ties and sustained diplomacy. Insecurity will persist, from disputedwaterways to proxy rivalries, but its management can move from unilateral reactions to collective approaches.
Türkiye’s diplomatic approach exemplifies this new security paradigm. By aligning humanitarian efforts, institutional diplomacy, and economic projects such as the Development Road, Ankara champions a model in which cooperation yields tangible mutual benefit. While instability is not totally eliminated, Türkiye’s central role fosters a system that contains and redistributes risk, making destabilisation increasingly costly and unattractive for regional actors.
