A New Corridor in the Middle East: One Year On
Levantine-Turkish-Gulf integration deepens as defence agreements, capital flows, and infrastructure deals bind the region's majority-Sunni states into an emerging bloc.
On 29th January 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called for a Middle Eastern security architecture built on regional solidarity rather than external hegemony. “No domination – no Turkish domination, no Arab domination, no Farsi domination,” he declared on Al Jazeera, proposing instead “a regional solidarity platform” where states cease outsourcing their security to outside powers. Drawing an explicit parallel with European integration, Fidan asked: “Look at how the European Union has managed to form itself from scratch to today. Why not us?”
One year after the fall of the Assad regime opened Syria to its neighbours, and six months after the full cessation of Western sanctions, the contours of a new regional order are becoming visible: a corridor of trade, capital, and collective security stretching from the Bosphorus through Damascus to the Gulf.
Fidan’s vision echoes a statement made by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman at the 2018 Future Investment Initiative, when he declared that “the new Europe is the Middle East” and predicted a regional renaissance within 30 years. That prophecy seemed distant at the time; Syria was a warzone, Turkish-Saudi relations were frozen over the Khashoggi affair, and Iran’s “axis of resistance” bisected the region. Today, the structural conditions have inverted. Iran has lost its Syrian foothold and faces domestic upheaval; Turkish-Saudi bilateral trade has reached record highs; and Syria, under President Ahmad al-Sharaa, has attracted $28 billion in investment commitments from Gulf and Turkish sources over the past year.
The Middle East contains approximately $4 trillion in sovereign wealth fund assets – more than any other region – and the states driving corridor integration control the lion’s share. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund alone deployed $36.2 billion in 2025, an 81% increase year-on-year, while Abu Dhabi’s funds collectively invested over $30 billion. This capital is seeking deployment, and the corridor’s infrastructure deficit represents a multi-hundred-billion-dollar opportunity: Syrian reconstruction alone is estimated at over $200 billion over 15-20 years. For project developers, infrastructure funds, and corporates with risk appetite, the corridor presents one of the largest emerging-market investment frontiers of the decade.
Yet the opportunity remains largely illegible to regional outsiders. Syria lacks a sovereign credit rating, bilateral investment treaties, and a transparent commercial legal framework. There are prospects of bilateral (or wider) defence pacts binding the corridor’s anchor states. Trade data is fragmentary, project-finance terms are undisclosed, and the institutional scaffolding required to underwrite large-scale capital deployment is incomplete. The question facing investors and policymakers is whether political alignment will translate into the legal and regulatory architecture that makes capital commitments bankable.
This report revisits and expands the “Sunni Corridor” thesis first published on Vizier one year ago. It is not a normative or sectarian designation: Türkiye, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and their immediate partners are majority-Sunni Muslim states, distinguishing them demographically from non-Muslim Israel and Shiite-majority Iran, the two other principal axes in regional politics. The corridor encompasses Arabs, Turks, and Kurds; its logic is geographic and strategic rather than confessional.
What follows examines how regional relations have evolved since the original article, marshals evidence that further integration is probable, and identifies the risks, data gaps, and institutional deficits that could yet derail the project. The house view in Vizier is that structural incentives favour continued integration, but that the corridor’s investment thesis depends on institutional reforms that have not yet occurred.
The Landscape in 2026
The corridor’s emergence rests on three structural shifts that occurred in rapid succession between late 2024 and mid-2025.
The first shift was the fall of Bashar al-Assad on 8th December 2024, which ended Iran’s four-decade foothold in Damascus and severed the land bridge connecting Tehran to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran had invested an estimated $30-50 billion sustaining the Assad regime between 2011 and 2020; that investment was written off in 12 days. The new Syrian government under President Ahmad al-Sharaa immediately pivoted toward Ankara and Riyadh; his first foreign visits as president were to Saudi Arabia (2nd February 2025) and Türkiye (4th February 2025), signalling where Damascus would seek its security guarantees and reconstruction capital.
Turkish exports to Syria surged 54% year-on-year to approximately $3 billion in 2025, making Syria one of Türkiye‘s fastest-growing export markets. The Türkiye-Syria Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) was established in August 2025, and negotiations are underway for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. Energy links are deepening. The Kilis-Aleppo natural gas pipeline began operations in August 2025, channelling Azerbaijani gas into Syria to alleviate energy shortages. Türkiye is committed to supplying 900 megawatts of electricity to Syria by the first quarter of 2026, with grid interconnection work already underway. A $7 billion energy consortium comprising Qatar’s UCC Holding, Turkish firms Kalyon and Cengiz, and US-based Power International, signed in May 2025 to construct 4,000 megawatts of gas-fired generation plus 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity in Homs, Hama, and Deir ez-Zor. These projects aim to address Syria’s acute power deficit (estimated at 5,000 megawatts) while creating long-term dependencies on Turkish and Gulf partners.
Where Turkiye’s contribution to Syria’s post-war reconstruction has largely depended on its industrial capacity to underwrite technical projects, Saudi Arabia has to date led the way as the largest source of foreign direct investment into Syria. Indeed, Syria's position at the intersection of Turkish, Gulf, and Levantine vectors makes it indispensable. President al-Sharaa has deliberately pursued this logic, positioning Damascus not as a supplicant but as a partner whose geographic centrality commands premium terms. At the October 2025 Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, he declared: "We chose the path of reconstruction through investment; we did not choose the path of rebuilding Syria through aid and assistance. We do not want Syria to be a burden on anyone."
Gulf capital has responded. The Syrian-Saudi Investment Forum in July 2025 resulted in 47 agreements totalling $6.4 billion across real estate, infrastructure, telecommunications, and energy. Saudi oil company ADES Holding signed agreements to develop five gas fields. Two Saudi banks began operations in Syria, with more preparing to enter; Syria’s finance minister indicated that Saudi financial institutions would soon have a significant presence. Qatar has been equally active: a $4 billion consortium will rebuild Damascus International Airport, while Qatari investment in Syria’s power grid addresses the country’s most acute infrastructure deficit. Saudi Arabia and Qatar jointly settled Syria’s $15.5 million World Bank arrears in April 2025, clearing the path for Damascus to access international financial institutions for the first time in over two decades.
On 3rd February 2026, the head of the Syrian Investment Authority, Talal al-Hilali, announced that Saudi Arabia is to provide a multi-billion-dollar investment package for Syria, including projects in tourism, telecommunications infrastructure, a new private Syrian airline, the rehabilitation of Aleppo airport, and a water desalination plant. Additionally, the Saudi Arabian government is to provide insurance coverage for investments to encourage Saudi companies to enter the Syrian market.
Infrastructure investments physically bind Syria to its neighbours. Border crossings with Türkiye now operate 24 hours daily, with throughput increasing from approximately 3,000 to 20,000 daily crossings. A bilateral transit agreement signed in November 2025 eliminated the requirement to unload and reload cargo at the Syrian border, thereby significantly reducing friction for Turkish exports to Gulf markets via Syrian territory. Türkiye, Syria, and Jordan signed a draft memorandum of understanding in September 2025 to revive the historic Hejaz Railway – the 1,750-kilometre Ottoman-era line from Istanbul to Medina – with Türkiye committing to complete 30 kilometres of missing Syrian track.
The second shift was the full cessation of Western sanctions on Syria. Following months of incremental European relaxations and temporary waivers by the US government, President Trump announced on 10th May 2025 in Riyadh that the United States would lift all Syria-related sanctions, explicitly crediting Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and President Erdoğan for lobbying the decision. The EU followed within days. On 18th December 2025, the US Congress voted to permanently repeal the Assad-era sanctions. Sanctions relief has unlocked Syria’s access to the global financial system, enabled major infrastructure contracts, and removed the legal barriers that had deterred institutional investors. However, the finer details of reconnecting Syria’s financial and economic institutions to the international system will require more time.
The third shift is the Turkish-Saudi rapprochement, a process that began tentatively after the Khashoggi crisis, when Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia fell to just $265,000 in 2021. The relationship has since seen a surge in trade to $8 billion in 2024, with both governments targeting $10 billion for 2025 and $30 billion over the long term. The composition of trade reveals complementary economic structures: Turkish exports of approximately $4 billion comprise manufactured goods including grains, textiles ($156 million in carpets alone), furniture (Türkiye now ranks as Saudi Arabia’s third-largest supplier behind China and Italy), machinery, and construction materials; Saudi exports of $3 billion concentrate in crude oil and petrochemicals, yielding a Turkish trade surplus of approximately $930 million — a significant shift representing Ankara’s pivot toward value-added manufacturing.
Construction has emerged as the most visible dimension of economic integration. Turkish contractors secured $2.3 billion in Saudi projects in the first nine months of 2024 alone, with Saudi Arabia now representing Türkiye’s largest construction market and $28.2 billion in cumulative projects completed since 1972.3 IC Ictas has commenced construction of a $107 million terminal at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, and in 2024 won the Wadi Laban Cable-Stayed Bridge (Saudi Arabia’s largest bridge project) valued at around $1 billion. Tekfen Construction maintains deep Saudi Aramco partnerships, including the $590 million Haradh Gas Increment Program and the $235 million Ma’aden Phosphate 3 project.
Investment flows complement trade in both directions. Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power (44% owned by the Public Investment Fund) ins talks for investment up to $5 billion in Turkish renewables, with two 1,000-megawatt solar plants in Sivas and Karaman provinces finalising agreements and an additional three gigawatts under negotiation. Saudi National Bank owns 64% of Türkiye Finans Katılım Bankası, one of Türkiye’s six Islamic participation banks, providing institutional depth to the financial relationship. More than 1,400 Saudi companies now operate in Türkiye, with combined capital exceeding $11 billion across agriculture, real estate, energy, and services.
Türkiye and the Gulf Cooperation Council launched formal negotiations for a free trade agreement in March 2024, with the first round held in Ankara that July. A successful conclusion would establish a $2.4 trillion free-trade area, building on Türkiye’s existing bilateral FTAs with the UAE and Qatar.7 The November 2024 Saudi-Turkish Business Forum produced ten cooperation agreements spanning agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, healthcare, and digital transformation, signed by over 450 companies.
Defence cooperation is shifting from disparate procurement deals to sustained integration: joint military committee meetings, naval consultations, technology-transfer agreements for armoured vehicles and drones, and now rumours of a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement modelled on the one signed between Riyadh and Islamabad in September 2025. A high-ranking Saudi official has rejected expanding the bilateral agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to include Turkiye; however, this does not preclude bilateral relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, or trilateral integration among all three states in other areas, such as trade and defence procurement.
At IDEF 2025 (“International Defence Industry Fair”, Türkiye’s premier defence fair) in Istanbul, Saudi Arabian Military Industries signed technology-transfer agreements with Nurol Makina, FNSS, and ASELSAN for tactical vehicles, armoured platforms, and combat turrets, respectively. Saudi Arabia will receive Turkish Bayraktar Akıncı combat drones, with up to 70% of production to be manufactured locally by 2026, and 300 Saudi employees already training at Baykar facilities. Türkiye and Saudi Arabia held their first-ever naval consultation in Ankara in January 2026.
These developments are mutually reinforcing. Syrian stabilisation serves Turkish security interests (PKK containment and refugee return), and Saudi strategic interests (Iranian rollback and northern border security). Turkish industrial capacity complements Gulf capital, and Syria’s reconstruction creates a gravitational pull that deepens interdependence among the three.
Tensions & Limitations Along the Corridor
Vizier’s corridor thesis does not predict inevitable integration. We argue that structural incentives, such as complementary factor endowments, shared threat perceptions, and geographic logic, favour continued alignment, and that the principal obstacles are institutional rather than political. If Damascus enacts commercial law reform, the defence integration expands, and infrastructure projects reach financial close and commence construction, the corridor will transition from aspiration to reality.
Thus, the corridor thesis rests on assumptions that may not hold. Three deserve particular scrutiny.
The first is the durability of the Turkish-Saudi rapprochement. A decade ago, Ankara and Riyadh were at loggerheads: Türkiye backed the Muslim Brotherhood across the region while Saudi Arabia designated it a terrorist organisation; the Khashoggi affair in 2018 brought relations to a nadir. The rapprochement since has been rapid but shallow in institutional terms. No treaty binds the two states, the proposed defence pact remains a rumour, and their alignment is largely a function of converging threat perceptions regarding Iran and Israel. Should their pressure subside, the strategic rationale for Turkish-Saudi cooperation weakens. Economic ties, while growing, are not yet dense enough to lock in alignment absent shared security concerns.
The second tension concerns spoiler capacity. Israel and Iran both have incentives to prevent corridor consolidation. Israel has demonstrated willingness to use force against Syrian territory, including strikes on the presidential palace grounds in Damascus, and its occupation of the Quneitra buffer zone and parts of southern Syria creates a permanent flashpoint. Iran, though diminished, retains the capability to fund insurgencies, assassinations, and sabotage operations — tools it deployed effectively during the March 2025 Assadist uprising on the Syrian coast. The corridor’s viability depends on containing these spoilers, yet neither Türkiye nor Saudi Arabia has articulated a credible deterrence strategy beyond implicit reliance on American power projection.
The third tension is institutional. The investment thesis outlined in this report requires legal and regulatory infrastructure that Syria does not yet possess: enforceable contracts, transparent dispute resolution, property rights certainty, and capital account convertibility. Turkish and Gulf investors have thus far committed capital on the basis of political relationships and implicit sovereign guarantees rather than institutional safeguards. This works for state-backed megaprojects; it does not scale to the broad-based private investment required for sustainable reconstruction. The gap between announced commitments and disbursed capital (unknown, but certainly far lower) likely reflects this institutional deficit. Until Damascus enacts commercial law reform, negotiates bilateral investment treaties, and accedes to international arbitration frameworks, the corridor’s economic promise will remain partially unrealised.
Making the Corridor Legible
The corridor thesis is not merely an argument about geopolitics; it is an investment thesis about the next frontier market boom, and a proposition about how regional peace might actually be achieved. The structural parallels with previous emerging market transformations are suggestive: ASEAN between 1985 and 1997, when political stabilisation and infrastructure investment created outsized returns for investors willing to tolerate opacity; the Gulf between 2002 and 2008, when petrodollar recycling and institutional upgrading opened markets that had been effectively closed to foreign capital; and now the Turkish-Saudi-Syrian corridor, which sits at a similar inflection point – immense potential matched by limited institutional infrastructure, a window that will not remain open indefinitely, and a scarcity of rigorous analysis to guide capital allocation.
Yet something larger than investment returns is at stake, however substantial. The corridor represents one of the few plausible pathways to durable regional peace that does not require the surrender of sovereignty to external guarantors or the perpetuation of great-power competition on Middle Eastern soil. The European model, binding former adversaries through economic interdependence until war becomes not merely undesirable but structurally unthinkable, is being attempted in compressed form. If Turkish industrial capacity, Gulf capital, and Syrian geography can be woven together tightly enough, the result would be a region where stability is generated endogenously rather than imposed exogenously, and the costs of conflict become prohibitive because the benefits of cooperation have become too valuable to forfeit. This is not inevitable; the tensions outlined above are real. But it is possible, and making it legible to investors, policymakers, and the publics whose futures depend on getting this right, is the work that Vizier exists to do.
What, then, should observers track to assess whether the corridor is consolidating or fragmenting? The indicators fall into five broad categories.
The first concerns the capacity of corridor states to coordinate cross-border initiatives and sustain policy implementation across political transitions – what might be called institutional coordination capacity. The critical near-term markers here are whether the Türkiye-Syria Joint Economic and Trade Committee established in August 2025 evolves into a genuine coordinating body or remains a ceremonial shell; whether defence integration moves from procurement and technology-transfer to pacts, and if so, whether its text is published and its collective-defence triggers specified; and whether Syria develops the ministerial and regulatory architecture to absorb and direct the capital being committed to it.
The second category concerns financial infrastructure – the payment systems, correspondent banking relationships, and capital-market plumbing that determine whether commercial relationships can actually clear. Syria’s reintegration into SWIFT was a necessary first step, but the deeper questions are whether regional payment platforms like the Arab Regional Payment System (BUNA) can reduce dollar dependence for corridor trade, whether Syrian banks can establish correspondent relationships with Turkish and Gulf institutions sufficient to finance reconstruction at scale, and whether political risk insurance becomes available from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the US Development Finance Corporation, or commercial providers. Without bankable project-finance structures, the gap between announced investment commitments and disbursed capital will remain wide.
The third category is regulatory alignment: the bilateral investment treaties, commercial law harmonisation, and dispute-resolution frameworks that determine whether contracts are enforceable across borders. For instance, Syria’s lack of ICSID accession, updated commercial code, and bilateral investment treaties with its principal partners constitutes the binding constraint on institutional investment; Gulf sovereign wealth funds can absorb political risk that pension funds and infrastructure investors cannot. The indicators to watch are whether Türkiye-Syria cooperation agreements conclude successfully, whether Damascus finalises bilateral investment treaty negotiations with Riyadh and Ankara, and whether Syrian commercial law modernisation proceeds on a timeline consistent with reconstruction needs.
The fourth category concerns market complementarity and physical connectivity. The Hejaz Railway memorandum signed in September 2025 is symbolic, but the real tests are whether Türkiye completes the 30 kilometres of missing Syrian track, and whether Syria-Türkiye border throughput (now approximately 20,000 daily crossings) continues to grow. Energy interconnection is equally critical: the Kilis-Aleppo gas pipeline represents the first step, but the Qatari-led $7 billion power consortium’s progress from announcement to financial close to construction will reveal whether corridor infrastructure can move from memoranda to megawatts.
The fifth category is network density: the diaspora flows, business relationships, and human capital movements that constitute the soft infrastructure of economic integration. Syrian returnee flows — whether skilled professionals in the diaspora choose to return, invest, or remain abroad — will shape reconstruction capacity more than any single policy decision. Turkish construction firms’ presence in Syria, Gulf investors' appetite for Syrian assets, and the density of business-council activity across corridor borders all serve as leading indicators of private-sector confidence that precede and often predict official policy.
These five categories — institutional coordination, financial infrastructure, regulatory alignment, market complementarity, and network density — constitute the analytical framework through which Vizier will assess corridor consolidation over the year ahead. We will track the indicators that matter, flag the developments that shift probabilities, and report what the data reveal about whether the corridor thesis is transitioning from aspiration to fact. The trajectory today is positive, but the destination remains uncertain. The work of making it legible continues.