This article is part of a collection of short essays written by the Fellows of the Middle East Institute to explore aspects of the ongoing war with Iran. The intent of the collection is to help readers see new and unexpected elements of the dynamics and impact of the ongoing hostilities and to think harder, deeper, and broader about the implications of the conflict. To read the other essays from this collection, as well as download the full report, please click here.
A longer version of this article was originally published by MEI on September 10, 2026.
In February 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan suggested that shifting international dynamics could push Turkey to acquire nuclear weapons, reigniting a decades-old debate over Ankara’s nuclear ambitions.
Foreign Minister Fidan’s remarks are only the latest in a series of public statements in which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other Turkish officials have increasingly challenged nonproliferation norms and even hinted at an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. That rhetoric, combined with Turkey’s civilian nuclear energy and research programs and its indigenous surface-to-surface missile development projects, has fueled concerns that these capabilities could eventually form the backbone of a Turkish nuclear weapons program.
Although Turkey remains far from possessing the technical capabilities needed for a nuclear weapons program and its national interests continue to favor nuclear restraint, the rhetorical shift suggests a broader change in Ankara’s thinking. This has been particularly pronounced since the failed coup attempt against Erdoğan in 2016. But the changing regional and global security environment is further strengthening the motivations and the rationale for Ankara to move away from its longstanding role as a champion of nonproliferation and toward a strategy of nuclear hedging — one that preserves the option to build nuclear weapons without actually pursuing them — by laying the technological and institutional groundwork that would make weaponization easier and faster should circumstances change.
Turkey’s Changing Stance on Proliferation
For decades after Turkey first articulated its nuclear weapons policy in 1959, Ankara showed little interest in developing nuclear weapons of its own. Turkey’s reluctance to pursue the bomb can be explained by three factors: its desire to maintain strong ties with the West and cultivate its image as a “good international citizen”; its belief that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) nuclear umbrella provided the most effective deterrent against both adversaries and regional proliferation; and its faith in the international nonproliferation regime as a means of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
Despite periodic tensions and repeated swings in its relationship with the United States, Turkey continued to value its NATO membership and hosted US nuclear weapons deployed under NATO auspices. As Ankara’s relationship with the West acquired an additional dimension through its pursuit of European Union membership, its commitment to the international nonproliferation regime grew stronger. Even as Iran’s nuclear program emerged as a concern for the US and countries across the region, Ankara continued to believe that diplomacy offered the best means of addressing the Iranian nuclear challenge.
These preferences were reflected in Turkey’s formal commitments to the international nonproliferation regime. Turkey ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1980, formally committing itself to remaining a non-nuclear-weapon state. The following year, it brought into force a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), placing its nuclear material and activities under international verification.
Until 2016, Turkish policymakers consistently advocated a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East and, later, broader global nuclear disarmament. When pressed, they categorically denied that Turkey had either the intention or the capability to develop nuclear weapons. While serving as prime minister, Erdoğan captured Ankara’s position in a 2009 speech, as Western pressure over Iran’s nuclear program was mounting. Turkey, he said, was “completely against nuclear weapons in the Middle East,” while criticizing what Ankara saw as a double standard: “There are countries with nuclear weapons in the Middle East, for example Israel. There is a difference: Israel is not a member of the IAEA; Iran is a member.”
The 2016 coup attempt marked a turning point in the Turkish government’s rhetoric on nuclear nonproliferation. It came against the backdrop of a deteriorating security environment in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood and growing tensions with its NATO allies, particularly the US. The war in Syria had sharply heightened Ankara’s sense of vulnerability. Washington’s partnership with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-linked Syrian Kurdish militia against the Islamic State (ISIS) had strained US-Turkish ties, while Russia’s retaliation after Turkey shot down a Russian jet in late November 2015 intensified Ankara’s security concerns.
The failed coup deepened those doubts. Erdoğan repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for being slow to condemn the coup attempt and for hosting religious leader Fethullah Gülen, whom he accused of masterminding it. Erdoğan’s rhetoric on nuclear weapons began to shift. In 2017, he acknowledged that nuclear weapons were contrary to Islam but added that “unfortunately the power war in the world requires [you] to have such weapons, even if you don’t want to.” By 2019, his language had become more explicit: at a Justice and Development Party meeting in Sivas where Erdoğan praised advances in Turkey’s indigenous defense industry and the country’s decreasing dependence on Western security, he said, “Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads, not one or two. But [they tell us] we cannot have them. This, I cannot accept.” He went on to say, “There is no developed nation in the world that does not have them. All of them have it,” later adding, “We are working on this.”
A Changing World Fuels Turkey’s Nuclear Rethink
The dynamics of the Iran war appear to have reinforced the rationale for Turkey’s changing stance on nuclear weapons. Turkish officials interviewed by the author believe that the Iranian leadership that emerged after the US and Israeli attacks on February 28, 2026, is more likely to pursue nuclear weapons than its predecessors, whom Ankara regarded as more risk-averse and restrained regarding weaponization. Although Turkey’s relationship with Iran has historically been less conflict-ridden than Iran’s relations with the Gulf states, Ankara still sees a nuclear-armed Tehran as a serious security threat — and one that could trigger a regional nuclear arms race.
In interviews, Turkish diplomats have pointed to the missiles Iran fired toward Turkey during the war as evidence of this new danger. NATO intercepted the missiles, and although Iran denied firing them, officials repeatedly suggested that Tehran was behind the attacks. Many in Ankara had assumed that Iran would never take such a risk against a NATO member. The attacks challenged that assumption, reinforcing the view that an Iranian regime fighting for its survival might take risks previously considered unthinkable.
A second development heightening Turkey’s concerns is the rise of an increasingly aggressive — and, in Ankara’s view, reckless — Israel. Israel has long maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear arsenal, an approach successive US administrations have effectively supported. For Turkey’s ruling elite, threats by an Israeli minister to use nuclear weapons in Gaza not only amounted to a rare public acknowledgment of Israel’s nuclear capability but also underscored the risks of preserving a regional nuclear imbalance. In Ankara’s view, such rhetoric could give other states greater incentive to seek their own deterrent. And by continuing to support Israel even when its officials invoke the potential use of a nuclear weapon, the US reinforces a grievance Turkey has voiced for decades: that the global nonproliferation regime applies one standard to Israel and another to its regional rivals.
Another recent development that, in the eyes of Turkey’s ruling elite, lends weight to Ankara’s shifting rhetoric is the US-Saudi nuclear deal. The deal would open the door to uranium enrichment on Saudi soil without giving it an unequivocal green light, pending the conclusions of a joint US-Saudi study on the economic viability of such a program. The agreement marks a departure from the “gold standard” of US civilian nuclear cooperation — a legally binding commitment under a Section 123 agreement to forgo domestic uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing, as the United Arab Emirates agreed to do in its 2009 nuclear cooperation agreement with the US. Ankara sees this agreement as another indication that regional states are becoming more serious about keeping a nuclear weapons option open, but also that Washington is relaxing its stance on nonproliferation.
This shift comes as Ankara, like many US allies in the Middle East and beyond, increasingly questions Washington’s reliability. The Iran war has reinforced a perception that the US is becoming more willing to take military risks in the region without sufficient regard for the security interests of its allies and that the nuclear landscape itself is changing. Fears that Washington could retreat from longstanding security commitments have fueled nuclear debates among several US allies, including Poland, South Korea, and Finland. From Ankara’s perspective, these developments reinforce a broader conclusion: as confidence in US security guarantees erodes and nuclear hedging becomes increasingly normalized, Turkey has more reason to reconsider its own longstanding restraint.
Three Scenarios for Turkey’s Nuclear Future
1. Relying on NATO Alone
Since joining NATO in 1952, Turkey has relied on the alliance, and particularly the US, for extended nuclear deterrence. It is also one of five NATO countries that host US tactical nuclear weapons, with B61 gravity bombs stored at Incirlik Air Base under strict American custody and control. The storage facilities at the base have been repeatedly upgraded and modernized, but tensions between Ankara and Washington and periodic regional instability have fueled recurring speculation that the weapons could eventually be moved out of Turkey.
NATO membership and the US nuclear umbrella have long been pillars of Turkish security policy. During the Cold War, Turkey particularly valued the deterrence provided by US nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. Yet its experience with NATO has also generated persistent doubts about the reliability of allied security guarantees. The 1974 US arms embargo following Turkey’s intervention in Cyprus and NATO’s reluctance to meet Ankara’s requests for alliance-backed missile defenses during the first Gulf War raised questions about how unconditional the treaty’s Article 5 protection really was. More recently, the Iran war and America’s cancellation of the F-35 sale to Turkey, combined with President Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO and his broader unpredictability regarding US commitments, have reinforced Ankara’s fears that Turkey’s security priorities may not be shared, or defended, by its allies.
2. Making a Run for the Bomb
Although the expansion of nuclear energy, increased access to nuclear-capable delivery systems, advances in enabling technologies, and greater availability and production of fissile material have made it easier and cheaper for states to reach nuclear-threshold status — and potentially choose to develop nuclear weapons — going nuclear remains a risky undertaking. For Turkey, particularly after years of tensions in its relations with NATO and its neighbors, the risks of following that path may be especially high. Turkey has taken significant steps to repair those relationships, and that effort reflects Ankara’s growing recognition that it cannot afford isolation in the Middle East or prolonged estrangement from its Western allies.
Turkey has a considerable stake in maintaining workable relations with both Western and Middle Eastern partners. Pursuing a nuclear weapons program — whether openly or covertly — would put those hard-won gains at risk, leading to renewed isolation from precisely the countries whose investment, technology, markets, and defense cooperation Ankara has spent years trying to secure. Therefore, Ankara is highly unlikely to pursue this path.
3. Moving Toward Nuclear Hedging
A shift toward nuclear hedging, as defined by Vipin Narang in Seeking the Bomb, is the most likely path for Ankara. This is why understanding the evolution of Erdoğan’s views matters. It is difficult to reach a definitive conclusion about Ankara’s intentions based solely on publicly available information. But Erdoğan’s increasingly assertive rhetoric, coupled with the foreign minister’s suggestion that international developments could compel Turkey to acquire nuclear weapons and changes in its security environment, points to a possible hedging strategy in which Ankara maintains strategic ambiguity about its intentions while keeping the nuclear option open. It avoids the potential break with the US and NATO involved in making a run for the bomb but gives Ankara more of a unilateral alternative if its partners continue to disappoint, or abandon it altogether.
How Close Is Turkey to a Bomb?
Those concerned about Turkey’s nuclear ambitions often point to several factors as evidence of both its interest in nuclear weapons and its potential technical capacity to pursue them. Some point to Turkey’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which reflects, in part, its manufacturing capacity for materials with potential applications in the nuclear industry. Others point to its plans to build multiple nuclear power plants, Ankara’s unwillingness to commit to restrictions on enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) activities in its Section 123 nuclear agreement with the US, and Erdoğan’s statements that Turkey could develop uranium-enrichment capabilities if needed for its civilian nuclear program. Another point raised is Turkey’s effort to accelerate its long-range missile development program. Finally, Turkey joined Saudi Arabia’s mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan in early August. Although the agreement did not mention nuclear weapons, it has further reinforced the strategic ambiguity surrounding Turkey’s nuclear intentions.
Indeed, Turkey’s interest in civilian nuclear technology, which dates back to the 1950s, has given the country a relatively advanced nuclear infrastructure. It operates longstanding nuclear research facilities and has expanded its scientific and engineering expertise. Yet the IAEA’s 2025 reporting suggests that Turkey remains well short of the technical capabilities associated with nuclear latency. It has no commercial uranium mining or conversion facilities and, most importantly, no identified uranium-enrichment or spent-fuel reprocessing capability. Its existing front-end activities are limited largely to safeguarded laboratory-scale research, including uranium concentrate refining, conversion to uranium dioxide (UO2), and fuel-pellet production.
Turkey plans to build multiple nuclear power plants as part of its strategy to diversify its energy mix and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers, which will significantly deepen Turkey’s experience with nuclear technology and will generate spent fuel. The specific model Turkey chose for its first plant limits its ability to develop some of the key indigenous capabilities associated with nuclear latency.
The Akkuyu plant is being developed under a build-own-operate (BOO) model, an unprecedented arrangement in the nuclear industry. Akkuyu Nükleer is wholly owned by subsidiaries of Russia’s state-owned Rosatom, which is providing roughly $20 billion in financing. Russia is responsible for the plant’s design, construction, maintenance, and operation for 60 years, as well as the supply and use of nuclear fuel and the plant’s eventual decommissioning.
The BOO model reduces Turkey’s financial exposure but creates significant dependencies. Turkey will rely heavily on Russian personnel to operate the plant and on Russia for its nuclear fuel. More importantly, the arrangement limits the extent to which Akkuyu can help Turkey develop autonomous nuclear capabilities, particularly in sensitive parts of the fuel cycle that can have both civilian and military applications.
The Turkish government has publicly acknowledged this dependence. Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has admitted that Turkey will rely entirely on Russia’s Rosatom for the uranium fuel to power Akkuyu and signaled Ankara’s desire to diversify: “To overcome this dependence, we are talking about fuel cooperation both with the country we are currently working with and with others we are discussing new projects with.” Turkey is negotiating with other potential partners, including the US, Canada, France, and South Korea, over additional nuclear plants, and Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar is developing small modular reactor (SMR) technology.
Ankara’s negotiations with Canada’s AtkinsRéalis are particularly noteworthy. Turkish officials have indicated an interest in Canadian involvement in Turkey’s second and third nuclear power plants. The CANDU reactor design has several features that could provide a relatively direct technical pathway to a nuclear weapon while making proliferation activities more difficult to detect. Unlike conventional light-water reactors, CANDU heavy-water reactors can operate on unenriched natural uranium, reducing dependence on foreign enrichment services and giving the operator greater autonomy over the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle. More importantly, CANDU reactors can produce plutonium well suited for weapons purposes and can be refueled while operating, features that can complicate IAEA monitoring.
The acquisition of a CANDU reactor would not automatically put Turkey on a path to the bomb. Extracting plutonium would still require the ability to reprocess spent fuel, which Turkey does not currently possess. A Canadian diplomat told the author that the proposed deal with Ankara includes “significant technology sharing,” but what, if anything, it would entail regarding reprocessing or spent-fuel separation remains unclear. What is clear is that Ankara wants greater control over its nuclear supply chain and, over time, to develop more indigenous capabilities. For now, however, the Akkuyu model constrains that ambition. As Aaron Stein has noted, if Turkey sought to divert Akkuyu toward a weapons program, it would have to remove the foreign operator and gain control of foreign-owned spent fuel stored at the site before it could even contemplate extracting plutonium for a weapon — a difficult and highly visible undertaking. Akkuyu will therefore deepen Turkey’s experience with nuclear technology, but it does not by itself provide Ankara with the most proliferation-sensitive capabilities.
Turkey is still likely at least a decade away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon. But Ankara’s perception of its threat environment could drive it toward a hedging strategy of taking steps to acquire the expertise and technical capabilities needed to preserve the option of developing nuclear weapons. How far Ankara will move in that direction remains uncertain. It could pursue relatively modest technical hedging or seek more advanced capabilities associated with nuclear threshold status.
Whichever path it chooses, Turkey will most likely try to remain within the NPT, seeking to expand its nuclear options without openly crossing the line into weaponization while maintaining strategic ambiguity about its ultimate intentions. Even the most advanced point on the continuum of nuclear hedging — reaching nuclear threshold status, figuratively “one screwdriver’s turn away” from having a workable nuclear weapon — can, in principle, be maintained without withdrawing from the NPT.
Maintaining strategic ambiguity about its ultimate nuclear intentions would offer Ankara an additional advantage: preserving the deterrent and bargaining value of its growing capabilities while reducing some of the political and security costs of openly declaring a nuclear-weapons ambition, including the risk of accelerating a regional arms race.
Yet a hedging strategy carries risks of its own, particularly in a conflict-ridden region such as the Middle East. The proliferation of hedging could transform the nuclear order even without producing an increase in the number of nuclear-armed states. As more countries seek the capability to approach the nuclear threshold without crossing it, the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear states becomes blurred. This could generate reciprocal hedging and arms-race dynamics, shorten breakout timelines, increase incentives for preventive military action, complicate intelligence assessments and safeguards, and ultimately erode the normative force of the NPT.
For Washington, the challenge is increasingly one of managing the nuclear trajectory of regional powers such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia rather than preventing them from acquiring greater nuclear capabilities altogether. The goal should be to prevent hedging from evolving into advanced threshold capabilities while addressing the security concerns that drive states to consider that option.
Attempting to eliminate all nuclear latency or prohibit enrichment altogether is neither realistic nor sustainable. Washington should focus on preventing the emergence of proliferation-prone national enrichment programs while promoting multilateral, IAEA-supervised fuel-cycle arrangements. One option would be a regional fuel-cycle framework in which participating states host different elements of the nuclear fuel cycle but no single country controls the entire supply chain necessary to rapidly convert a civilian program into a weapons capability. Such an arrangement could accommodate regional demands for greater nuclear autonomy while reducing incentives for competitive national enrichment programs.
Washington must simultaneously address the insecurity driving hedging behavior. In Turkey’s case, this means strengthening extended deterrence and restoring Ankara’s confidence in the credibility of US security guarantees. Reassurance, however, should be coupled with clear nonproliferation red lines. Washington should make explicit that continued US security guarantees are tied to adherence to nonproliferation commitments and that moves toward weapons-relevant capabilities would carry consequences for the bilateral security relationship.
Gönül Tol is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, where she focuses on Turkish politics, US-Turkey relations, and regional dynamics in the Middle East.
Top image: An aerial view of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant under construction in Mersin, Turkey, on May 24, 2026. Photo by Akkuyu Nucleer PP/Anadolu via Getty Images.
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