TURKEY AND IRAN: COMPETITION AND CONFRONTATION
Al-Akhbar English
August 29, 2012 Wednesday
Lebanon
On August 21, the Mokdad clan kidnapped two Turkish citizens with
the intention of holding them hostage until a member of their family
who went missing in Syria is released. Meanwhile, the families of the
11 kidnapped Lebanese in Syria held a sit-in in front of the Turkish
embassy, and threats were issued against Turkish military personnel
working with UNIFIL in the South.
These incidents in Lebanon have coincided with rising tensions between
Turkey and Iran due to shifts in the Syrian conflict and the kidnapping
of 48 Iranians by rebels there. Tehran has issued warnings to Ankara
and the situation threatens to deteriorate into an open confrontation –
a scenario both Turkey and Iran seem keen to avoid.
When Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu outlined a new
approach to foreign policy in his book, Strategic Depth, he wanted
a smooth implementation of certain principles based on his theory
of eliminating all sources of tension with neighboring countries:
solve thorny disputes by dialogue (or put them off, if they cannot be
immediately resolved) and develop channels for cooperation. Dialogue
had even begun to move forward with Armenia, albeit slowly. Davutoglu
himself described it as a policy of “no fighting with the neighbors.”
Turkey has decided to ride the wave of change sweeping across the
region for the purpose of extending its own influence. This policy
of “eliminating problems” has failed. It worked when the region was
relatively peaceful, the ordinary conflicts notwithstanding. But we
are currently living through an exceptional period. The Arab Spring
foiled all calculations and overturned the scales.
Turkey has decided to ride the wave of change sweeping across the
region for the purpose of extending its own influence. It is supporting
the Arab revolts under the pretext of establishing relationships
within the new order, while at the same time sliding deeper into
regional conflicts.
There was a time when Turkey could have avoided getting directly
involved in these struggles – Egypt and Tunisia are geographically at
a distance from Turkey, and the regimes there fell quickly. In Libya,
Turkey supported the revolutionaries under the umbrella of the UN
Security Council, and Gaddafi’s regime fell after a few months of
intense fighting.
In Syria, the situation is different. From the very beginning,
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that what
was happening in Syria directly affected Turkish national security,
lending geopolitical justification to Ankara’s position.
Syria, which shares a 822-kilometer border with its northern neighbor,
was Turkey’s gateway to the Middle East. Trucks carrying Turkish
goods once travelled through Syria and on to Jordan, Iraq, and other
Arab countries.
Turkish trade has suffered with the closing of this passage, and
the sea route through the Mediterranean to the Red Sea via the
Suez canal is long and expensive. According to informed sources,
the Turkish foreign minister has been discussing the possibility of
cutting customs taxes on Turkish ships with the Egyptian government.
It was for these reasons Turkish diplomats initially tried to find
a quick solution to the Syrian crisis by supporting radical reforms
that would include the opposition in the political process, while
keeping Bashar al-Assad in power until the end of his mandate.
Turkish diplomats initially tried to find a quick solution to the
Syrian crisis by supporting radical reforms that would include the
opposition in the political process.At that stage, even Iran was
advising Assad, through its president and the secretary general
of Hezbollah, to open dialogue with the opposition. But Ankara was
embarrassed by Assad’s intransigence, the cosmetic reforms he rolled
out, and his decision to pursue the military option, and so it excused
itself as mediator and thus became party to the long conflict alongside
the opposition.
It was natural that this position placed Turkey in conflict with
allies of the Syrian regime, especially Iran. But neither country
wants a confrontation. They would prefer to maintain a sort of
“civil competition” for influence in the region (in the words of the
Turkish ambassador to Lebanon), or at least to postpone any conflict
between them.
The Islamic republic is busy with its confrontation with the West over
its nuclear program, and it is not in Tehran’s interest to enter into
a direct conflict with Turkey, which would only serve to push Ankara
towards the Sunni-Arab military alliance against the “Shia crescent.”
Moreover, Iran needs Turkey to break the economic siege that has been
imposed upon it. Turkey’s interest, meanwhile, lies in reassuring Iran
that its Middle East policy is not a threat to Iranian interests and
influence, which explains Turkey’s joint initiative with Brazil to
find a solution to the Iranian nuclear dilemma.
Turkey also has an interest in developing its economic ties with
Iran, with trade between the two countries reaching approximately $10
billion in 2011, not to mention an agreement to build a gas pipeline
from Tabriz to the Gulf of Ceyhan on the Turkish coast.
The economic and political cooperation between Turkey and Iran is not
an alliance, but rather an arrangement imposed on the two countries
by political realities.
The economic and political cooperation between Turkey and Iran is not
an alliance, but rather an arrangement imposed on the two countries
by political realities. Iran is closely monitoring the evolution of
Turkey’s role in the region, especially in areas where Iran exerts
influence: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. In recent years,
Iran expressed concerns over Turkey and Syria’s increasingly close
relationship, as it was also wary of Ankara’s influence in Iraq in
the form of significant investments in Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran was also
caught off guard by Turkish support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Before Syria became a battlefield, hints of an impending
Turkish-Iranian rift appeared in Lebanon, when the leaders of both
countries visited Lebanon in 2010. Hezbollah toppled Saad Hariri’s
government just one month after the Turkish leader’s visit, with
Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah rejecting a bilateral request
from Davutoglu and the Qatari prime minister to reinstate the Future
Movement leader as the head of the next government.
In November of 2011, in response to Ankara’s support for the Syrian
opposition, Tehran threatened to strike the NATO missile shield in
Turkey in case of an Israeli-American attack. Today, Iran’s threats
are economic in nature and influenced by fundamental shifts taking
place in the Syrian conflict.
The Syrian opposition – with support from Ankara and various
Western states – is locked in a battle for control of Aleppo,
which it intends to make the seat of its military leadership and
transitional government, a development that threatens to tilt the
balance of political and military power in favor of the opposition.
Turkey does not need Iranian oil or gas like China does, and its
interests, as opposed to those of Russia, lie in the weakening of Iran
in the Middle East and central Asia. The Iranian-Turkish rift is still
in its beginning stages. Iran is losing its cards one after the other.
It lost the Palestinian card after the Hamas leadership left
Damascus and the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt. It is
also supporting a dying Assad regime.
Iranian diplomacy too has lost its nerve, and if it makes economic
threats against Turkey, it will come out the loser. Turkey does not
need Iranian oil or gas like China does, and its interests, as opposed
to those of Russia, lie in the weakening of Iran in the Middle East
and central Asia.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah is being pulled deeper into internal politics
due to its support for a helpless government and its March 8 allies,
who are busy fighting over how to divide the “pie” of power. The party
is attempting to compensate in terms of popular support by drumming
up fears of what will happen if the Assad regime falls, with Hassan
Nasrallah explicitly stating that “the situation is out of control.”
However, Hezbollah has not realized that this approach pushes the
country towards chaos, and perhaps war. What we fear most is that the
party will try to use the hostages card as it did in the 1980’s. But
the geopolitical reality in the region is completely different. The
power of Hezbollah’s allies, Syria and Iran, is in decline, while
the regional role of their enemies is on the rise.