10Haber (10 December 2025)

Mehmet ÖĞÜTÇÜ

Some questions in the Middle East linger for decades, echoing through diplomatic circles and among communities who feel history has bypassed them. “Did Turkey neglect the Turkmens of Iraq and Syria?” is one such question. It appears simple, yet the answer lies not in black-and-white certainties but in a wide band of geopolitical grey.

The Turkmens, after all, are not a peripheral minority for Turkey. They represent the natural cultural and historical extension of Anatolia into Mesopotamia and the Levant. And yet, over the past thirty years of upheaval—from sanctions to invasions, civil wars to demographic engineering—the same doubt has resurfaced: Why did Ankara not do more?

To answer that, one must return to the fragile period between the 1990s and mid-2000s, when the region’s political ground was being remoulded in real time.

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