‘After Iran, is Turkey Israel’s next target?’

This is apropos a letter to the Editor carried by the newspaper on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and yesterday.

If Israel continues to treat every independent regional power as the next Iran, it may achieve short-term military successes while creating long-term instability across the Middle East. From Ankara’s perspective, the lesson of recent conflicts is that diplomatic appeals, international institutions, and conventional military capabilities alone may not always be viewed as sufficient safeguards against a state that believes it enjoys overwhelming strategic superiority.

Turkey’s challenge, therefore, is to develop a level of strategic deterrence—political, economic, technological, military, and diplomatic and nuclear—that convinces any potential adversary that the costs of confrontation would far outweigh any conceivable gains.

History suggests that lasting peace is rarely preserved by goodwill alone; it is preserved when both sides recognize that conflict would be mutually damaging and strategically unwinnable.

Only such a credible balance can prevent rivalry from escalating into the next great catastrophe of the Middle East.-Concluded

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026