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Opinion: Turkey’s coercive experiments in maritime claims, proxies, ports and drones provide the beta version of a playbook now scaled by China across the Indo-Pacific, serving as a warning to Australia that coercion through maps, corridors and cheap drones can shape power long before shots are fired, explains strategic analyst Shay Gal.
Darwin Port was not just a deal but a warning. Turkey is the beta version of China’s coercive strategy – its experiments in claims, proxies, ports and drones preview Beijing’s playbook now applied across the Indo-Pacific.
For Canberra, recognising Turkey’s tests means grasping China’s method before it strikes closer to home.
From the Mediterranean to the Indo-Pacific
In 2019, Ankara signed a maritime memorandum with Libya, ignoring Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and the sea between. Though annulled by the EU and Libyan courts, it gave Ankara leverage over energy routes. Northern Cyprus played the same role – Turkey’s South China Sea. Under the “Blue Homeland” (Mavi Vatan) doctrine, the sea becomes sovereign space, with occupied Cyprus an unsinkable carrier projecting drones, SIGINT and garrisons – pressing on Greece, Israel and Europe.
Mavi Vatan treats the surrounding seas as extensions of the Turkish homeland, redrawing maps to claim energy zones and justifying permanent military deployments. Beijing mirrors this: the nine-dash line is its cartographic twin, China’s artificial islands the counterpart of Turkey’s Northern Cyprus outposts. Both strategies are tied to wider designs: Turkey’s Middle Corridor as alternative to Suez and Russia’s north, China’s Maritime Silk Road as the backbone of Belt and Road. In both cases, ports and sea lanes are instruments of coercion, disputed waters front lines of projection.
Proxies, ports and Pakistan
The parallel is even clearer in the grey zone of proxies. Networks based in Turkey have served as conduits for Iranian funds to the Houthis in Yemen, as exposed by recent US sanctions. Ankara launches no rockets or drones but funds them – mirroring China’s maritime militia of “fishing boats” turned into an irregular navy. Both show deniable assets work better than open aggression: in the South China Sea unsettling the Philippines and Vietnam, in Europe destabilising Greece and Cyprus through migrant flows and proxy networks.
Ports and corridors tell the same story. In 2015, a Chinese consortium bought control of Kumport, Istanbul’s third-largest container terminal. The same year, Landbridge, a Chinese firm, secured a 99-year lease of Darwin Port – a strategic crisis for Canberra.
Meanwhile, Turkey promotes its “Middle Corridor” across Central Asia as an alternative to Suez and Russia’s north, boasting double-digit cargo growth. Beijing does the same with the Belt and Road. For India, the effect is unmistakable: two corridors, one backed by China, one supported by Turkey, converging on Pakistan.
In South Asia, the Turkey–China synergy is most tangible. Beijing and Islamabad are long-time partners through the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Chinese drones; Ankara now adds corvettes, deeper defence cooperation and diplomatic cover on Kashmir.
For New Delhi, this creates a dual squeeze: Chinese pressure east via the Himalayas and maritime chokepoints, Turkish leverage west via Pakistan and new corridors – an unprecedented pincer.
For Pakistan, the same synergy multiplies dependency: CPEC has locked it into China’s debt embrace, while Ankara uses it as a test range for drones and naval platforms. Far from elevation, Islamabad is treated as a client – a Gulf corridor, South Asian proxy, weapons showcase.
This is not empowerment but exposure: Pakistan is no longer only squeezed between India and Afghanistan but entangled as the proving ground of China’s and Turkey’s coercive experiments.
Drones, minorities and the lessons for Australia
The role of drones illustrates the overlap further. Turkish TB2 and Akinci – adapted from Israeli designs – reshaped warfare in Ukraine and Africa, proving cheap swarms can bankrupt expensive defences and, exported as “good-enough” systems to unstable regimes, earned Ankara contracts and political leverage.
China’s Wing Loong, a Predator clone sold at $1–4 million versus $30 million, has been supplied to Pakistan and Belt and Road partners hostile to the West. In both cases, drones are not battlefield assets but instruments of subjugation: creating dependence through training, logistics and co-production, turning purchases into political influence.
Beyond drones, both powers extend coercion into strategic deterrence. Turkey’s Akkuyu plant, built by Russia, locks Ankara into dependency while planting dual-use potential – echoing Beijing. Likewise, Turkey’s Tayfun ballistic missile, with ranges covering Greece, Cyprus, Israel and NATO assets, mirrors China’s anti-ship and medium-range missiles used to push rivals from contested waters.
Just as China’s DF-series underpins its coercive posture in the Pacific, Turkey signals that maps and ports are reinforced by hard power: nuclear projects entrenching leverage, missiles turning cartographic claims into threats.
Both powers have also expanded overseas footprints – China in Djibouti, Turkey in Mogadishu – to place a hand directly on maritime trade. In 2024–25, Turkey expanded its naval presence in Somalia, just as China increased pressure around Taiwan and reinforced its South China Sea outposts – reminders both enlarge their reach now, not in a distant future. The nine-dash line is, in essence, Mavi Vatan with Chinese characteristics – a cartographic empire in blue ink.
Even within open societies, the parallels persist. China uses the United Front to influence diasporas and institutions abroad; Turkey deploys its religious directorate and migrant networks in Europe as instruments of soft coercion. Neither tool is ornamental. Both erode resilience from within, making adversaries hesitate. Ankara has crushed Kurdish aspirations with decades of military campaigns, political bans, and linguistic erasure, while simultaneously denying the Armenian genocide.
Beijing has erased Tibetan identity through forced assimilation, exile of the Dalai Lama, and restrictions on language and faith, while running mass internment and “re-education” camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The irony is acute: Turkey at times postures as the Uyghurs’ patron in the name of pan-Turkic solidarity yet cynically silences its own minorities. Both regimes follow the same pattern – erasing peoples and rewriting history at home, while demanding recognition of expansive claims abroad.
For Singapore, small states at crossroads are most vulnerable to maps drawn elsewhere. The Strait of Malacca carries 40 per cent of global trade and 80 per cent of China’s energy – making it a chokehold overnight. With a large Chinese diaspora at home, Singapore embodies the dual vulnerability Beijing exploits: seas as battlegrounds, societies as soft bases.
The Red Sea crisis showed this playbook: Houthis, sustained via Turkish-linked networks, turned Bab el-Mandeb into a chokepoint that forced rerouting and spiked insurance – leverage from a narrow strait Beijing could replicate in Malacca.
For Australia, the lesson is immediate: maps are weapons, ports leverage, proxies statecraft, drones attrition. Coercion needs no conquest; power is wielded by maps and cheap drones overhead. Studying Turkey as China’s beta prepares Canberra for the same playbook. Turkey’s experiments are rehearsals of Beijing’s coercion – soon on Australia’s doorstep.
The mirror also works both ways: Turkey offers the rehearsal for China, and China the scale that explains Turkey. Together they form a single playbook – tested in the Mediterranean, deployed across the Indo-Pacific, where blue maps and waters are 21st-century battlegrounds.
Shay Gal is a strategic analyst and adviser specialising in international security, crisis management, and diplomatic strategy. He advises senior government and defence leaders on complex strategic challenges, while also operating globally on power relations, geopolitical strategy, and public diplomacy, with a focus on their impact on policymaking and decision making.
