When Turkish voters elected a former Islamist as president August 28, it highlighted the complex geopolitical riddle unfolding in modern Turkey.

Turkey is a nation with a split identity. The nation’s population is almost wholly Muslim, but its constitution is staunchly secular. It is a democracy and a constitutional republic, yet since 1960 its military leaders have overthrown four duly elected governments for being too religious. It is anchored to the Middle East as a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, yet welded to the West within the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. On top of that, a pillar in Turkey’s foreign policy for a generation has been its bid for membership in the European Union.

The new president, Abdullah Gul, is right at the center of this puzzle. He was a cabinet member in one of the ousted Islamic governments in the 1990s—yet he has been a leading supporter of his nation’s EU membership application. His devotion to Europe certainly placates the nation’s generals and military commanders, but his religion still chafes against their fierce loyalty to the secularist ideals institutionalized in 1923 by the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The stickiness of Gul’s ascension to the presidency showed in two conspicuous absences at his swearing-in ceremony: Gul’s Muslim wife (who would have been breaking Turkish law by entering a public building wearing her Islamic headscarf) and Turkey’s military leaders (who are probably still wrestling over whether to expel the new president).

Outside these domestic tensions, nations across the globe are contemplating the implications of an Islamic Turkish presidency. That is because for all its contradictions, Turkey is shaping up to be an extremely significant global player.

After decades of relative insular quiet since the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War i, the nation is enjoying an impressive geopolitical surge. As the globe increasingly fractures into regional blocs—the United States, the Middle East, Europe, Asia—Turkey remains a distinct entity whose value to all of these powers is rapidly rising.

Let’s examine three reasons Turkey is warranting so much global interest.

First, its economy is on fire—it is one of the fastest-growing on Earth. Since 2002, under the leadership of the Justice and Development Party, to which Gul belongs, the economy has transformed. It is now the largest Muslim economy, and the largest in the region. Turkey is a member of the G-20, a gathering of the world’s 20 largest economies. In addition, it is playing its cards wisely, reducing restrictions on trade with Muslim states while cultivating relationships with European and other nations at the same time.

As Dr. George Friedman put it, “The ability of Greece, Armenia, Syria, Iraq and Iran to remain hostile to Turkey decreases as the Turkish economy grows. Ideology and history are very real things, but so is the economic power of a dynamic economy” (Stratfor, July 31).

Of course, a large Turkish economy means a large Turkish military. Already it is nato’s second-largest armed force after the U.S., with over 1 million uniformed personnel. This fact has several ramifications regarding the balance of power in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Second, Turkey is comfortably stepping into a ready-made role as a vital energy hub linking Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.

This is one of the most geographically strategic nations in the world—a literal bridge between continents. On its west, Turkey borders Greece and Bulgaria—EU nations; on its south, Syria, Iraq and Iran—Middle Eastern Muslim states; and on its east, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan—former Soviet republics. It connects to the Mediterranean, Black and Aegean seas, and encompasses the vital Bosporus and Dardanelles sea gates, linking Central Asia to the Mediterranean. In a world increasingly driven by energy politics, its unique location translates into valuable energy transit routes for more and more nations.

With Russia aggressively taking over global oil and natural gas markets, uncomfortable customers, particularly Europe, are actively seeking energy from other sources. Turkey is in the right place at the right time, with major oil pipelines being built across its soil, circumventing Russian territory altogether. Turkey is proving itself a worthy middleman for energy from not only former Soviet republics Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, but also Iraq and Iran. In addition, Turkey, in conjunction with foreign investors and companies, is building new oil refineries, which will increase its worth even more. Analysts say the nation’s refining capacity should double within only a few years.

This reality seems tailor-made to suit Turkey’s foreign-policy interests, because the entity hungriest for non-Russian energy happens to be the very one Turkey has been working so hard to pretty itself up for: Europe. To this point, Ankara’s designs on becoming European—in the works since 1959—have been repeatedly rebuffed and postponed. Turkey hopes that becoming an energy bridge to the Continent will finally convince the EU to return the love.

Naturally, the whole situation also deeply concerns Russia, whose monopolistic energy tendencies are undercut by Turkey’s activities. (Moscow is also irked by any shift toward Islamism around Central Asia, which, it could be argued, the Turkish election was. Russia is robustly fighting a strong Islamist incursion on its southwestern border, particularly against Muslim separatists in Chechnya. It has proof that Turkey financially supported and trained Chechen terrorists in their struggle for independence. So Turkey is already on Russia’s bad side.)

A third reason for Turkey’s growing significance is its role in the unfolding drama surrounding the future of Iraq. The two primary external players—the U.S. and Iran—both need Turkey’s cooperation in order to resolve the crisis in a manner suited to their own national interests. This gives Ankara heavy leverage with both.

The Iraq war has created problems for Turkey. Since the late 1970s, it has struggled with a restive Kurdish population in its southeast region, driven by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk). This terrorist group seeks to carve an independent Kurdish state out of territory in southeast Turkey, as well as parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran. Whatever differences these four nations have, they are united in their determination to stop Kurdistan from materializing.

The fact that the U.S. emboldened the Iraqi Kurds by eliminating Saddam Hussein rocked the alliance between Turkey and the U.S.—and simultaneously strengthened the historically wary relationship between Ankara and Tehran.

The U.S. is in a tight spot. The Kurds have been the friendliest of any faction in Iraq, and the U.S. doesn’t want to turn its back on them. But in practical terms, as it contemplates reducing its presence in Iraq, Washington’s primary concern is to try to prevent Iran from simply taking over—not just Iraq but virtually the entire Middle East. In Turkey, it sees the closest thing it has to a regional counterbalance to Iran. So we can expect to see the U.S. looking for ways to demonstrate solidarity with Turkey as it contemplates troop withdrawals.

At the same time, Iran will surely seek to cement its new rapport with the one power that could check its own regional ambitions. And you can be sure that any move in that direction will make Israel nervous, with whom Turkey has enjoyed an enormously important strategic partnership for some years.

So, how might Abdullah Gul’s election—and even more, the new reality that “for the first time since the founding of the Turkish republic more than 80 years ago, a political force rooted in Islamism essentially controls all of the key civilian institutions of the state,” in the words of Stratfor (August 29)—affect these various situations?

This is the question on the minds of several national leaders—including, quite notably, those in the U.S., the European Union, Central Asia, Russia, Iraq, Iran and Israel. It is certainly worthy of contemplation, and has serious global ramifications. The Trumpet will take up the question in a future article.