Since the Arab Uprisings, regional politics of the Middle East has transformed from a system organized around and against a US-managed security architecture into a multipolar system lacking norms, institutions, or balancing mechanisms to constrain conflict and the use of force. The paper argues that this shift is not a result of the retreat of the US or a consequence of a so-called “power vacuum,” but a product of repeated US efforts to order the region through coercive force within the context of the emerging multipolar system at the global level. US post-9/11 interventions failed to establish a stable regional security architecture but rather generated intense insecurity for both rival and allied states as well as societies and while witnessing the proliferation of armed non-state actors. As the regional system has become more complex and multipolar, continued US reliance on coercion rather than accommodation and compromise has only intensified the forces of regional instability. Relative levels of state consolidation, the permeability between domestic, regional, and global levels, and the disjuncture between regime, state, and social understandings of security have been critical to the development of distinct approaches to the study of the Middle East IR. Most recently, the rise of non-state actors is recognized as critical to understanding recent changes in the Middle East regional system. Building from these insights, this paper argues that the Middle East regional system can best understood as a model of “turbulence.” By turbulence I mean a system with a proliferation of heterogenous actors below and above the state level with expanded capabilities that disrupt and complicate the dynamics of the regional politics. States remain the most powerful actors, but the definition of their interests and the capacity of their actions to achieve desired goals is diminished as these states must negotiate a multidimensional geography of rival forces and actors within the context of increasingly multipolar global politics. The inefficiency of balancing, breakdown of regulatory norms, and increased capacities for self-organization by armed non-state actors all help sustain the regional environment of turbulence. The result is a turbulent regional system in which state interests are often hard to discern and shift in complex ways. Such an environment fostered the emergence of ISIS and complicates regional politics as states have to navigate a hyper-polar environment that gives greater leverage to smaller actors and makes the alignment of interests between states more contingent and fragile.