Strategic Leverage and Regional Balancing: Türkiye’s Role in Trump’s Middle East Agenda and The Shifting Architecture of Regional Power

This paper explores the shifting role of Türkiye in the Middle East during Donald Trump, outlining how Ankara utilized an evolving regional and global context to rebrand itself as a regional power. Trump’s foreign policy was a radical break from liberal internationalism and embraced instead the neorealist policies of selective engagement, strategic recusal, and transactional diplomacy. Here, the recharted geography, Türkiye navigated the fine line between NATO alliance obligations and burgeoning relationships with Russia, China, and regional actors, asserting its national sovereignty and strategic involvement. Analyzing Türkiye’s balancing acts in key theatres — from post-Assad Syria and nuclear diplomacy with Iran to defense-industrial cooperation in the Gulf — through the prisms of neorealist and neoclassical realist lenses, this paper argues that. It argues that Trump’s strategic strategy inadvertently encouraged middle powers like Türkiye to push their leverage to the fullest extent while meeting Washington’s burden sharing expectations.