February 16, 2026
“Is Erdogan’s Turkey Becoming Iran 2.0?”
with Abdullah Bozkurt
Is Erdogan’s Turkey Becoming Iran 2.0?
How has Turkey, once a NATO pillar and EU hopeful, evolved under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan toward becoming what some analysts have called “Iran 2.0” in the region? Abdullah Bozkurt will examine Ankara’s growing alignment with Sunni Islamist movements, including allegations of protecting Hamas operatives, facilitating the organization’s fundraising networks, granting citizenship to affiliated figures, and providing intelligence support. He will further explore claims that Iranian-linked actors have gained influence within Turkey’s political landscape and detail how Islamist, Hamas-aligned ideology has been amplified through Turkish state institutions, amid the deliberate fueling of anti-Israel rhetoric by the country’s top leadership. What does Turkey’s transformation mean for regional power dynamics, NATO, and the broader Middle East?
Abdullah Bozkurt is a Swedish-based investigative journalist and analyst who runs the Nordic Research and Monitoring Network. He also serves on the advisory board of the Investigative Journal and as chairman of the Stockholm Center for Freedom. Bozkurt is the author of Turkey Interrupted: Derailing Democracy (2015). He previously worked as a journalist in New York, Washington, Istanbul, and Ankara. Bozkurt holds a BA in political science and international relations from Turkey’s Boğaziçi University.
