The last time I saw my friend Abed, he was in the mood to celebrate. It was about a year ago and the two of us met for dinner in Fatih, a district in Istanbul where many Syrian refugees had settled.

Abed had come from a meeting with the immigration services, and it looked as though his application for Turkish citizenship would soon be approved. His relief was palpable. He ordered us more food than we could possibly finish and spoke with optimism about a business he was starting and the impending birth of his first child.

I eventually asked why he felt so certain about his application. “It’s my last name,” he explained. “The official noted that its origins come from around Aleppo, which, before it was a Syrian city, was an Ottoman one. It turns out I, too, am a Turk.”

Over the past five years, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has, through a deft series of political maneuvers, ushered in a vast expansion of Turkish influence across the Middle East, consolidating his power with the establishment of an executive presidency, bolstering his alliance with Russia and compromising the Saudi leadership with leaked surveillance tapes related to the execution of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate.