Türkiye’s Mediation Diplomacy in the 2026 Iran War: Examining the Mediator Image Constructed by Opinion Leaders in the Media

Abstract

During the 2026 Iran War, Türkiye took on a prominent regional role through the diplomacy it conducted between the warring parties. This study examines how opinion leaders in Western and Arab/Gulf media represented that mediation. The corpus consists of fifteen expert commentaries, read through critical discourse analysis. Drawing on van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach and Fairclough’s three dimensional model, the analysis works through six discursive strategies: naming, actor representation, presupposition, modality, polarization, and metaphor. Both groups of commentators attribute active diplomatic agency to Türkiye, but they weight that agency differently. In the Arab/Gulf texts, Türkiye appears as a central actor that seizes the opportunities the conflict opens up, and its legitimacy is grounded in cultural and historical references, above all its Ottoman past and its standing in the Muslim world. The Western texts describe a more constrained actor with limited room for maneuver, one largely carried along by events it does not control. This study is significant in showing how opinion leaders from different sociocultural backgrounds represent Türkiye’s mediation role differently in the media.