IF THERE IS ONE STORY FROM THE PAST WEEK that best represents the brave new world we are entering as the Trump administration continues its dismantling of the much derided “liberal international order” that was underpinned by U.S. military power, our system of alliances, and rules-based free trade, it wasn’t the will-they-won’t-they back-and-forth about the Strait of Hormuz ceasefire agreement, nor the thousands of pages of government documents about UFOs the administration released, presumably to distract from the Hormuz business. Instead, it was that Turkey, on May 5, unveiled an intercontinental ballistic missile in Istanbul at the 2026 SAHA defense and aerospace exhibition.
The body of the prototype missile on display this week interestingly bears the signature of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern secular Turkish republic, and the tughra (a calligraphic seal or signature) of Sultan Bayezid I, also know as Bayezid “the Thunderbolt,” who in the early fifteenth century reduced the population of Anatolia to Ottoman vassalage, besieged Constantinople only to be defeated in a rearguard action by Tamarlane, and spent the end of his days as a prisoner. The “Yıldırımhan” or “Lightning” missile—which is designed to carry conventional warheads—symbolizes the fusion of Turkish nationalism and its Ottoman Islamic past, much as the ruling AK Party has attempted to do over its quarter century of rule. Not to put too fine a point on things, an AI video produced to tout the missile (which has yet to be tested) appeared to show it “hitting nuclear facilities and other targets that appeared to be in the U.S.,” according to the Financial Times. It was not totally reassuring that Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler insisted the missile was meant for deterrence and appeared unaware of the AI video.