The Unconventional Centre Country: Evaluating Türkiye’s Indo-Pacific Engagement

Türkiye has emerged as an unconventional Indo-Pacific actor. This article explains why and how Türkiye has become visible in a region far from its primary strategic theatres, and why this matters for debates on international hierarchy and middle-power agency. Drawing on a neoclassical realist framework and qualitative evidence across five dimensions (trade, political-normative activity, security engagement, external pressures, and regional posture), the article shows that Türkiye’s Indo-Pacific actorness stems from permissive systemic conditions filtered through enduring domestic intervening variables, especially its national role conception as an Afro-Eurasian ‘centre country’. Türkiye’s engagement remains selective and bounded, yet sufficiently consequential to warrant analytical attention. More broadly, the case demonstrates how unconventional actors lacking geographic embeddedness and material centrality can nonetheless shape Indo-Pacific dynamics through calibrated engagement and specialised capabilities.