Gulf countries are turning to Turkey to address a new security reality as they emerge from the Iran War bruised and battered.
Damage to critical infrastructure inflicted by Iran during the war prompted the Gulf states to face up to the shortfalls in their dependence on the United States for protection and to seek other avenues to bolster their security. Turkey’s accessible weapons systems are proving attractive to Gulf countries keen to find a new strategic counterbalance in a volatile region.
“The moment offers enormous opportunities for Turkey to position itself as an alternative defense industrial supplier at a time when countries in the Gulf are looking to diversify,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, director of The Turkey Project at The Brookings Institution.
“If Turkey can continue its normalization path with Gulf Arab states and regional powers, it is only going to benefit in terms of defense partnerships, ” she added.
Growing Demand
Arab Gulf countries have expressed heightened interest in purchasing strategic defenses from Turkey, which has been a member of NATO since 1952. Last month, Kuwaiti defense minister Sheikh Abdullah Ali Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah signed a letter of intent with Haluk Gorgun, the president of Turkey’s Defense Industry Agency, to strengthen defense cooperation. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar have similarly moved to solidify arms arrangements with Ankara.
Appetite is especially keen for drones and short-range air defense systems from Turkish firms such as Baykar, which are seen as the most efficient defenses against Iran’s cheap and abundant missiles and drones.
Turkey’s emergence as a major defense supplier comes after two decades of substantial investment in the country’s defense industry. Over 20 years, Turkey has gone from an importer of arms to a major exporter of military technologies like drones. Today, it sells weapons to 40 countries across the Gulf, Asia, Africa and Europe. Turkey now provides 65% of global armed drone supply, making it a military powerhouse far beyond the region.
Change and continuity
For decades, Gulf countries have relied almost exclusively on the U.S. for military protection against Iran. The U.S. defense apparatus in the Gulf consists of an extremely technologically advanced and expensive security shield. It often proved cumbersome and cost-inefficient against Iran’s abundant, cheap missiles and drones during the war. This inefficiency, combined with political indecision and uncertainty from Washington, evinced shortcomings in the U.S.-Gulf defense partnership.
“The war in Iran has shown a number of things,” Aydıntaşbaş said. “First of all, [Gulf states] are hugely vulnerable to Iranian drone attacks, and they need to up their drone infrastructure. Secondly, they need far more than expensive interceptors that the United States has been providing them.”
Turkey’s defense provisions offer several advantages.
“Turkey is providing kit that’s at the right price and the right tech level for the kinds of threats that these states are facing,” said Howard Eissenstat, associate professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University.
“What [the Iran War] has demonstrated is that the US has relied on high tech solutions to problems that there’s lower tech options for.”
While Turkish defense sales have filled some of the gaps revealed by the Iran War, both Aydıntaşbaş and Eissenstat agreed that the U.S. remains the predominant defense partner in the Gulf.
“Turkey is not in the same league as the United States,” Aydıntaşbaş said. “But because it has such a robust drone and anti-drone technology and missile system, it can actually help [Gulf states] in a future drone-centric warfare.”
The same sentiment was reiterated by Eissenstat who said that while the U.S. would remain the pillar of Gulf State strategic considerations, Turkey has a key role to play there, too. “It’s not so much that [Gulf states] are attempting to replace the United States as that they’re trying to figure out how to create a more balanced structure where they’re not utterly dependent on the U.S.,” he said.
Hedging Bets
In a geopolitical landscape that demands constant hedging and balancing of power, Turkey’s increased regional influence also has political appeal for Gulf countries. Ankara’s growing prominence makes it a strategic counterweight to Israel, which has been viewed as an unreliable regional actor by Gulf states in recent years.
The Abraham Accords, brokered during the first Trump administration, established newfound diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states and set Israel-Gulf relations on an upwards trajectory. The last several years, though, have undermined those trends.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza post-Oct. 7th placed renewed pressure on Arab states to stand in solidarity with Palestinians, and Israeli military operations in the last year further undermined Gulf states’ trust in Israel as a regional partner. Particularly damaging to Israel-Gulf relations was the Israeli bombing of Qatar, a U.S. ally, in September 2025.
Against this backdrop, Turkey has positioned itself as a rival to Israel militarily, politically and ideologically. Relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv have deteriorated in recent months as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has characterized Israel as a destabilizing force and global threat.
“Pulling Israel back to within the bounds of the rule of law has become a shared duty not just for certain countries, but for all of humanity,” Erdogan said earlier this month.
Posturing against Tel Aviv has further aligned Turkey with Gulf countries skeptical of Israel’s regional power.
“Many countries in the region are not entirely happy with the idea that Israel would be the leading hegemon in the region, able to militarily dominate their neighbors and use the airspace of the entire region at its will,” Aydıntaşbaş said. “Turkey is trying to position itself as an alternative or a balance against a more Israeli-dominated regional order.”
For Gulf countries, improving ties with Turkey could offer a double advantage of fortifying security at home and checking Israeli influence abroad. The strengthening of defense partnerships suggests that they are seizing that opportunity.
