Mustafa Kutlay on Turkey’s middle power dilemmas
July 22, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #249 – Mustafa Kutlay, senior lecturer in comparative politics at City St George’s University of London, on his recent Foreign Affairs article “Turkey’s Middle-Power Dilemma”.
Turkey is widely cited as one of the increasingly influential players in the emerging world order, with greater appetite and greater capacity to play a bigger role in its region and elsewhere.
Mustafa’s article focuses on the successes and failures of the Turkish government’s bid to carve out that greater role in the name of “strategic autonomy”. It also underlines the risks posed by this new world of increasingly ambitious, competitive powers clashing and cooperating with each other.
Download the episode or listen below:
Read a transcript of the interview on Substack
Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Bluesky
Please support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
Turkey Book Talk 