Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Dr. Mustafa Al-Tal
The fear that your country’s geography might become obsolete – in the third installment of the “Engineering Fear” series, we move from the Strait of Hormuz and the streets of Amman to the Eastern Mediterranean, asking: Are corridors and legislation becoming deadlier than missiles?
From the Fear of Bombing to the Fear of Exclusion
In our two previous installments of “Engineering Fear,” we argued that ceasefires in the Middle East are no longer mere temporary pauses in hostilities but have evolved into sophisticated mechanisms for conflict management. We saw how this “engineering” moved from negotiation rooms to the streets, from the Strait of Hormuz to the markets of Amman, where fear became a commodity to be distributed, managed, and even invested in.
But what we have not yet discussed is that fear in the Middle East has found new tools far more complex than missiles and drones. Today, it can be said that congressional legislation, land and sea corridors, and railway lines have become weapons no less deadly than any bomb, because they draw new maps of fear that have nothing to do with direct lines of fire.
Turkey, which was not a central focus of our previous episodes, today presents a unique model: a buffer state attempting to transform into an assertive actor. Not because it is militarily stronger, but because it is trying – within the limits of its capabilities – to master the art of counter-fear engineering. In the absence of the ability to break the American-Israeli siege by force, it has chosen to attempt to reinvent geography itself, despite the enormous economic and geopolitical constraints it faces.
In this third episode, we start from the realities of the Turkish encirclement in the Eastern Mediterranean to ask a broader question: What happens when fear is engineered not through direct threats, but through the redrawing of trade routes, energy corridors, and supply chains?
Legislative Fear: When Congress Digs the Trenches
What most analysts of Middle Eastern conflict have failed to notice is that Washington no longer needs to deploy aircraft carriers for every crisis. It has a more efficient, cheaper, and more durable weapon: American law.
The US legislation concerning the Eastern Mediterranean that has received broad bipartisan support in Congress in recent years can be read – through the lens of the “Engineering Fear” framework – as an institutional practice of producing codified exclusion. These laws have not only excluded Turkey from energy alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean but have also contributed to making this exclusion appear “natural” and “institutionalized,” making it difficult for any future US administration to fully reverse course.
Legislative fear engineering means, in short: making marginalization an institutional rule, and inclusion an expensive exception. This produces a specific kind of fear that can be called “institutional permanent fear.” Turkey no longer fears only traditional security threats, but also fears that its exclusion from the “India–Middle East–Europe Corridor” could become a legal reality applied automatically, regardless of who sits in the White House.
Turkey: Attempting the Transition from a “Peripheral Buffer” to an “Assertive Buffer”
In geopolitical literature, the “peripheral buffer” is a state located at the intersections of multiple security zones, absorbing regional shocks without producing them. For decades, Turkey was in this position: separating Europe from the Middle East, Russia from the Mediterranean, without leading regional interactions.
But what is happening in Ankara today is a serious attempt at transformation, even if it still faces structural obstacles. Turkey is trying to become an “assertive buffer”: a state aware that it has been excluded from major alliances, seeking to develop compensatory regional ambitions, albeit constrained by a hostile geography, American legislation, and a fragile economy.
This attempted – incomplete – transformation is precisely what the “Engineering Fear” framework describes: when fear reaches a certain threshold, it does not necessarily lead to collapse; it may drive a reinvention of the self, within the limits of available capabilities.
Turkey’s attempts to respond to the American legislation that excludes it focus on three main tools.
First: the “Blue Homeland” doctrine, which redefines Turkish maritime sovereignty through continuous military exercises, aiming to make any party hesitate before imposing a fait accompli in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Second: developing alternative corridors from the east, most notably the “Development Road” with Iraq (still under development and not yet completed), in addition to land-linkage projects with Jordan and Syria that are still in their early stages.
Third: strengthening its presence in Lebanon and Syria, through TIKA, its troops in UNIFIL, to entrench the idea that the security of Beirut and Damascus is linked to the security of Anatolia.
What Ankara is trying to do can be understood as an attempt to engineer “reverse fear”: Israel, America, and Greece have begun to feel growing concern – albeit limited – that land corridors linking Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, if completed, could partially redraw regional trade without passing through the maritime routes currently under their dominance.
The Battle of Corridors: The India–Middle East–Europe Project vs. Emerging Alternatives
The silent battle that has begun to take shape gradually is taking place beneath the surface: over who controls the corridors that move goods and energy between Asia and Europe. These corridors are not merely roads; they can be described as the arteries of fear – because control over them redistributes anxiety to everyone.
On one hand, there is the “India–Middle East–Europe Corridor,” backed by the United States, Israel, and the UAE, which is in gradual operation and is viewed in Ankara and Tehran as an attempt to reshape regional trade in a way that marginalizes their relative roles.
On the other hand, Turkey, Iraq, and Qatar are trying to push the “Development Road,” which connects the Gulf to Europe through Iraqi and Turkish territory, but this project is still under development.
As for the land projects inspired by the historic Hejaz Railway, aimed at connecting Turkey with Syria, Jordan, and then Saudi Arabia, they remain within the framework of initial understandings.
The striking paradox is that fragile stability in the region arises not only from the balance of military terror but also – and perhaps increasingly – from the balance of the fear that your country’s geography might become obsolete. None of these corridors can achieve a “decisive victory” in the short term, but with every kilometer of railway laid, and with every new US law passed, the map of fear is silently redrawn.
Lebanon and Syria: A Testing Ground for “Distributed Fear”
What is happening in Lebanon today can be read as a miniature laboratory for Engineering Fear 3.0. Turkey has a quiet but present presence there: through TIKA, through its troops in UNIFIL, and through attempts to provide technical assistance to Beirut in delimiting its Exclusive Economic Zone. But it faces an entrenched Iranian influence, a deeper Western presence, and an Israeli influence seeping through normalization.
The surprising – even alarming – reality is that no one wants a real “solution” in Lebanon. Israel wants Lebanon weak but not collapsed. Iran wants Hezbollah strong but not to the point of dragging it into a full-scale war. Turkey wants a friendly Sunni presence, but not to the point of provoking America.
This is what can be called “Distributed Fear”: each party fears the complete collapse of Lebanon, and also fears its true stability. Lebanon is not merely a victim of this engineering; it is one of its tools. Its remaining fragile is precisely what allows everyone to manage their fear of each other without direct confrontation.
China and Russia: The Biggest Beneficiaries
While America, Israel, Turkey, and Iran are preoccupied with the conflict over corridors and legislation, Beijing and Moscow are moving quietly in the background.
China continues its well-known strategy: never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. The war on Iran, the legislation isolating Turkey, the battle over corridors – all of these, from Beijing’s perspective, are American mistakes that drain Washington. And while regional powers are preoccupied with their influence struggles, China continues to quietly and pragmatically expand its cross-border connectivity networks, without placing itself in direct confrontation with anyone.
Russia, for its part, adopts “managed chaos.” Moscow does not want a genuine peace in the Middle East; it wants the continuation of tension at a manageable level. The more actors are involved and the more their interests intersect, the greater the need for Moscow as a mediator that cannot be easily excluded.
The Broader Picture: Fear as Mobile Geography
Today, in the middle of 2026, fear is no longer merely a feeling or a reaction. It has become something engineered through the drawing of new lines on the map: through legislation passed in Congress, through railways laid in the Iraqi desert, through ports built in Aqaba and Mersin, and through fragile alliances bound together by a shared fear of exclusion.
In the new Middle East, geography is no longer a fixed destiny, but a mobile battlefield. And the deeper problem is that states no longer fear only military defeat; they fear something more painful: waking up one day to discover that the world’s trade routes, energy corridors, and digital networks have redrawn themselves around them, and that their carefully engineered fear is no longer enough to protect them from irrelevance.
Turkey is trying today, within the limits of its capabilities, to be a player in this game. Jordan tried in our second episode to manage its fear between the hammer and the anvil. The Gulf states are trying in our first episode to redefine their alliances.
But the larger question remains open: When does engineered fear turn into genuine panic? And when do the tools of engineering themselves turn into comprehensive chaos?
Perhaps the deeper question that a fourth episode – if written – deserves to ask is: Can we engineer fear without ourselves, over time, becoming part of its machinery?
