June 29, 2026

For more than a decade, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP have built a sophisticated intellectual and personnel infrastructure that has steadily shifted Turkey from difficult NATO ally toward strategic competitor, and in key circles, an ideological adversary of the United States.

From powerful ideological vanguards and family-linked cadre factories to radical Eurasianist groups, defense technocrats, and the dwindling transatlantic holdouts, this ecosystem supplies both the doctrinal justification for policies that clash with Washington and the human capital that populates the Presidency, MİT, ministries, parliament, and defense bureaucracy.

The Middle East Forum presents the first comprehensive interactive visualization of this architecture.

Explore the full spectrum of hostility, trace the revolving door of personnel, examine institutional ties, and review MEF’s cluster-by-cluster strategic recommendations — all in one self-contained tool built from primary Turkish sources, leadership records, and documented state linkages.

The Architecture of Turkey's Anti-Americanism

The Network Matrix

An interactive map of 21 Turkish think tanks and policy foundations: where each sits toward the United States, how their personnel move into the state, and the institutional ties that turn doctrine into policy.

The Spectrum · hostility to alignment

Each organization placed by its core posture toward Washington. Select one to open its full profile below.

The Pipeline · from think tank to the state

Documented personnel moving between these institutions and Turkey's presidency, ministries, intelligence service, parliament, and defense bureaucracy. Click an institution to trace its people; hover a line for the individual.

Part of the Middle East Forum series The Architecture of Turkey's Anti-Americanism: Part I: Ending the Subsidy, Part II: The Intellectual Architecture of Turkish Foreign Policy, and the 21 organizational dossiers. Postures and ties reflect each organization's own publications, leadership, and documented state links.

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Gregg Roman

Gregg Roman is the executive director of the Middle East Forum, previously directing the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. In 2014, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency named him one of the “ten most inspiring global Jewish leaders,” and he previously served as the political advisor to the deputy foreign minister of Israel and worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense. A frequent speaker on Middle East affairs, Mr. Roman appears on international news channels such as Fox News, i24NEWS, Al-Jazeera, BBC World News, and Israel’s Channels 12 and 13. He studied national security and political communications at American University and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, and has contributed to The Hill, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, and the Jerusalem Post.

The Architecture of Turkey’s Anti-Americanism - Matrix

Inside the Think-Tank Network Fueling Ankara’s Rift with Washington — Interactive Matrix

The Network Matrix