After 23 years in power, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s time may finally be running out. His visible physical decline, coupled with global tremors — the removal of Venezuela’s autocrat Nicolás Maduro and the looming demise of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — has pushed the question of succession in Turkey to the forefront. Since late 2025, Mr. Erdogan has been maneuvering to shape what comes next.
Turkey is not a conventional adversary. It remains a member of NATO. Yet under Mr. Erdogan, Ankara has become a persistent saboteur of American and European security interests. That makes the identity of his successor not a parochial Turkish matter, but a strategic question Washington can no longer afford to ignore.
Who comes after Mr. Erdogan will determine whether Turkey continues an expansionist, ideologically driven foreign policy that seeks to position Ankara as the dominant Muslim power in the Middle East — or whether the country can begin the long process of reinstitutionalizing itself as a credible Western ally.
As the second-largest military in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey under Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly damaged the alliance’s collective security. Ankara acquired advanced Russian missile systems in defiance of American warnings, deepening strategic dependence on Vladimir Putin.
Turkish leaders have openly threatened the territorial and maritime integrity of fellow NATO member Greece and E.U. member Cyprus. When mass protests erupted in Iran, Mr. Erdogan stood shoulder to shoulder with Tehran, praising President Masoud Pezeshkian for how his government “handled” the unrest.
In Syria, Turkey has entrenched thousands of troops in the country’s northwest, establishing a semi-permanent military presence. Ankara now finds itself locking horns with Israel over Syria’s future, raising once-unthinkable questions about the risk of conflict between a NATO member and the Jewish state.
If the Trump administration is serious about burden-sharing and alliance discipline, it should direct its scorn not at Denmark but at Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey.
No issue better illustrates Ankara’s betrayal of NATO norms than terrorism. Mr. Erdogan’s admiration for Hamas rivals that of Qatar. Istanbul has become a sanctuary for Muslim Brotherhood operatives designated as terrorists by Washington. Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, Turkey has stood alone among NATO members in openly embracing Hamas as a “resistance” movement.
This record raises an uncomfortable question: Could a post-Erdogan Turkey — under the wrong leadership — replace Iran as the Middle East’s most destabilizing power?
That depends entirely on succession.
Speculation has intensified as Mr. Erdogan’s health visibly deteriorates. The Turkish press increasingly floats the possibility of dynastic succession through his son, Bilal Erdogan — an Islamist figure widely viewed as an authoritarian apprentice cut from his father’s cloth.
Yet Bilal Erdogan’s path is far from uncontested. On one side stand Erdogan loyalists: his son-in-law Selçuk Bayraktar, the billionaire “drone prince,” and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, an imperial ideologue who helped engineer Turkey’s security state. On the other side stand two secular, reformist figures capable of reversing Turkey’s authoritarian slide: Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, and Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, of the Republican People’s Party, the party of Ataturk.
Mr. Imamoglu was jailed in 2025 on politically motivated charges after challenging Mr. Erdogan for the presidency. Mr. Yavas may yet face the same fate.
Were either man to win a genuinely free election, Turkey’s foreign policy could pivot. Both would likely abandon Ankara’s flirtation with terrorist groups, repair ties with the West, and re-anchor Turkey as NATO’s southeastern bulwark against Russian and Iranian aggression.
But that outcome presumes a fair contest — an assumption bordering on fantasy.
Mr. Erdogan has shown he will take no risks with regime survival. Lawfare, press domination, and electoral manipulation remain his preferred tools. As loyalists jockey among themselves, the assault on democratic challengers will continue unabated. Street mobilization may soon be democracy’s last line of defense.
A century ago, the Ottoman Empire was known as the “sick man of Europe.” Obsessed with imperial resurrection, Mr. Erdogan has turned himself into the sick man of NATO. Turkey’s chance at redemption hinges on what comes next — and America ignores this succession struggle at its peril.
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The Turkey Program Research Intern at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, William Doran, contributed to the authorship of this article.
