SETA (Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research) in Türkiye launches Middle East: Order from Within, a new research program on how regional order is being built and contested from within the region. The program rests on three pillars: security, economy and governance. How do regional states produce security through cooperation and competition? How do trade, energy and reconstruction bind states together? Which institutions hold an order in place? SETA treats these as one question, not three. Security, economy and governance shape each other, and together they decide what kind of regional order emerges.
The program begins with a panel series, Order from Within: Visions from Regional Capitals. The timing is urgent. Interconnected conflicts, the Iran war, the Gaza crisis, Syria’s state-building process and shifting equations in the Eastern Mediterranean are reshaping the region. Traditional security guarantees are eroding. A post-Western environment is taking shape, and regional capitals are seeking to take greater responsibility for their own stability. Yet international commentary still looks at the region mostly from Washington or Brussels. This series moves the debate inside the region. It brings scholars, former officials and policy experts from Ankara, Riyadh, Tehran, Cairo and beyond into one conversation about building order from within.
The series spans ten specialized sessions. It aims to capture how regional actors interpret and respond to systemic challenges. The discussions avoid standard crisis management narratives. They focus instead on how regional actors see order itself. How do competing capitals define their threat perceptions and the main sources of insecurity? Are regional states merely reacting to shocks, or are they actively building a sustainable order? How can national strengths, from defense capacity to economic connectivity and state institutions, translate into collective initiatives such as the Makkah Agreement, strategic diversification and robust state capacity?
To answer these questions, the series brings first-hand local perspectives into critical debates. Participants will unpack defense diversification in the Gulf, emerging maritime architectures in the Red Sea, and deterrence in the Eastern Mediterranean. They will also address postwar realities in Iran, Syria’s institutional and economic reconstruction, Iraq’s role in regional connectivity, and the limits of normalization after the Gaza war. The ambition goes beyond analyzing events or tracking tactical moves. Order from Within: Visions from Regional Capitals explores the competing visions of long-term order, sovereignty and state-building that regional actors themselves seek to project.
The panel series is the first step of a broader research program. Alongside the expert panels, the program includes high-level keynote addresses, the Cornerstone Lectures, and a podcast, Under Construction. The program culminates in the Order from Within Report 2027, which bridges academic rigor with actionable policy insights. SETA will build on this work with further research, publications and datasets across security, economy and governance. By foregrounding regional ownership and locally driven mechanisms, Order from Within establishes SETA as an essential convening hub for policy communities committed to understanding and shaping the future of Middle Eastern regional order.
