The Islamic Republic of Iran deserved its terror designation. It cheerleads Hamas, funds it, trains its leaders, and smuggles weaponry to it. Turkey now does the same.
By Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum
In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution that swept away Iran’s shah and replaced the Iranian monarchy with a clerical rule.
Overnight, Iran transformed from a pillar of American partnership in the region to an adversary and terror sponsor. The change was undeniable, even to Iran’s most ardent supporters.
Prior to his ascent to power, Khomeini denied any ambition to rule Iran. He spoke of bringing democracy and renounced interest in ruling Iran. “I don’t want to have the power of government in my hand; I am not interested in personal power,” he told one gullible journalist.
There is an irony today that while policymakers recognized the obvious regarding Iran’s transformation, too many remain in denial about Turkey’s equally momentous shift.
The pragmatism that Western officials ascribed to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was always a ruse that Erdoğan embraced to allay concerns while he consolidated power. It worked. And not just with the Obama administration.
Daniel Fried, George W. Bush’s assistant Secretary of State for European affairs, described Erdoğan’s AKP Party as “a kind of Muslim version of a Christian Democratic Party,” while Bush’s Secretary of State, Colin Powell, praised Turkey as a “Muslim democracy.”
Erdoğan played to Western naïveté as he consolidated control. The Turkish leader’s authoritarian tendencies were on full display after the March 2025 arrest of Turkish opposition figure Ekrem İmamoğlu on spurious charges.
Erdoğan’s subsequent crackdown on protestors only exacerbated Western concerns that Turkey’s window to join the club of liberal democracies has all but closed.
In hindsight, Ankara’s European Union accession process had less to do with a desire to join Europe than with serving as a mechanism to consolidate Erdoğan’s autocracy.
Indeed, Erdoğan was only too happy to accede to European demands that he unravel any internal military role in Turkish society. In theory, this was good for democracy, given the military’s role in toppling previous regimes.
In 1960 and 1980, the Turkish Army interceded to end governments that violated the constitution or failed to maintain law and order.
In 1971 and 1997, the threat of intervention was enough to force governments to resign. But the European Union unraveled the military’s role to protect the constitution before establishing a check on Erdoğan’s power. In retrospect, this may have been the final nail in the coffin for Turkey’s democracy.
Erdoğan’s first step in consolidating his dictatorship was to hijack the technocratic bodies. His first move was to replace every member of the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) with veterans of Islamist finance.
The TMSF is analogous to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the United States, but it also has a broader purview and is more powerful.
Erdoğan weaponized it to audit banks and corporations affiliated with his competitors and often saddled them with ruinous fines. He soon moved the TMSF under the purview of the prime minister’s office and, when he assumed the presidency, it accompanied him.
Erdoğan also created a new Revenue Administration (GIB) that, in practice, imposed punishing tax assessments not only on political rivals but also on anyone who donated to them.
In one famous case, a news report about a Turkish-German charity transferring money illegally to Islamists in Turkey infuriated Erdoğan. Tax authorities punished the Dogan Group, the newspaper’s owner, with a spurious $600 million tax lien.
When Dogan paid the penalty and the newspaper continued to report critically on the Turkish strongman’s governance, authorities slapped Dogan with a $2.5 billion fine. Ultimately, Dogan offloaded his media holdings to pro-Erdoğan interests.
This was the rule rather than the exception: The Erdoğan government confiscated the high-circulation independent daily Sabah, for example, and transferred its control to his son-in-law after forcing all other potential bidders to back out of the auction for Sabah and its assets.
By gaining full control over not only newspapers but television and radio as well, Erdoğan was able to shape a media narrative that only reinforced his efforts to consolidate domestic power.
The fawning coverage of Erdoğan’s endless incitement against Israel and promotion of terror groups like Hamas has further fundamentally changed Turkey’s public opinion on foreign affairs.
None of this should have surprised. Erdoğan’s Islamist ideology was always there for those who cared to see. While mayor of Istanbul, Erdoğan said, “Thank God almighty, I am a servant of Shari’a [Islamic law].”
He later described himself as “the Imam of Istanbul.” But his jihadi leanings were not the only ideological red flag. The Turkish strongman famously likened democracy to a streetcar.
“Democracy is like a tram ride: when you reach your stop, you get off.” As Erdoğan consolidated control, he shed any pretense of moderation.
As this FDD research memo makes clear, Turkey today qualifies as a state sponsor of terrorism. Across administrations and political parties, two faults undermine U.S. policy.
The first is a tendency to ignore ideology. Erdoğan has a core set of beliefs. It is a mistake to confuse tactical moderation with sincere conversion. Second, U.S. officials consistently calibrate American policy to wishful thinking about what they hoped Turkey is or believed it once was rather than what it is now.
A corollary error is to believe that Turkey can return to the status quo ante. More than 35 million Turkish children have matriculated through the education system since Erdoğan came to power; Turkish media have incited tens of millions more.
Erdoğan has staffed the civil service with men in his image. He has also used coup plots, real and imagined, to replace the leadership of the Turkish General Staff.
Even if Erdoğan dies tomorrow, it will take decades to wash Erdoğanism out of the system. And that assumes that his successors and the political opposition do not look at his populist formulas as keys to their own future success.
The Islamic Republic of Iran deserved its terror designation. It cheerleads Hamas, funds it, trains its leaders and smuggles weaponry to it. Turkey now does the same. And just as Iran supports other terrorist groups around the Middle East, so does Turkey.
The Islamic Republic does not limit its terror sponsorship to Hamas; it supports Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Kashmiri terrorist groups based in Pakistan that target India.
There is overwhelming evidence that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force also supported the Al-Qaeda-led insurgency in Iraq.
Likewise, there is ample evidence that Turkey does not limit its terror sponsorship to Hamas. In 2015, the center-left daily Cumhuriyet published photos of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) transferring weaponry to an al-Qaeda affiliate on the Syrian border.
Turkey’s reaction was not to investigate its intelligence operatives but rather to launch a legal case against Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief, Can Dundar. He later survived an assassination attempt.
Today, the Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rules large swaths of Syria, and it remains to be seen whether this group engages in aggression against its neighbors after consolidating power.
The Islamic State, meanwhile, found safe haven in Turkey at the height of its caliphate. Syrian Kurdish forces who were defending Kobane, a city that abuts the Turkish border, have videos of Islamic State fighters enjoying free passage into Turkey and then firing on the Kurdish defenders from Turkish territory.
On February 28, 2025, Lebanese authorities announced they intercepted $2.5 million carried by a Turkish man arriving at Beirut’s international airport. The intent was to distribute those funds to the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
There should be no free pass for NATO members to engage in terror. Nor is it undiplomatic to sanction allies if their behavior merits it. Designating Turkey a state sponsor could certainly have downsides.
There are elements of the Turkish-U.S. relationship that still benefit Washington and the West. But there are limits to how long Washington can turn a blind eye to Ankara’s longstanding support to jihadi terror groups.
Terrorism sanctions against Turkey would infuse credibility into the State Department’s terror designation process by demonstrating that objective factors trump subjective ones.
Just as designations regarding money laundering led Cyprus and Armenia to work with Washington to reform and reverse the designation, so too should the goal of any Turkey terror designation be to provide a roadmap for Turkish officials, under Erdoğan or any future administration.
They must understand what they must do should they wish for Turkey to rejoin the U.S.-led alliance.