Soner Cacaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy writes about the shifting relationship in MES Insights, a publication of the Marine Corps University. Cagaptay says the alliance started as a response to the US occupation of Iraq and has ended with the end of that occupation, although not entirely because of the end of that occupation.
Cagaptay says that Turkey decided to warm up its ties with Tehran beginning in 2002, when the mildly Islamic party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan took office.
When US troops invaded Iraq in 2003, “Turkey and Iran became, in a sense, friends,” Cagaptay writes. “Alarmed by the US military presence to its east in Afghanistan and to its west in Iraq, Tehran concluded that it needed to win its neighbor Turkey to break the grip of the US-led ring of isolation forming around it. Iranian support for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) ended the day US troops started landing in Iraq.”
Nine years later, he says, Tehran is re-evaluating its strategic environment. With US troops having left Iraq and Iran gaining more influence there, Tehran feels it can act differently toward Turkey.
Furthermore, Cagaptay argues, “Turkey’s return as a major player in the Middle East has stirred competition with the region’s other country seeking hegemony, Iran. A soft rivalry started between the two countries when they supported opposing factions in Iraq’s 2010 elections. This struggle has given way to outright competition over Syria, with Tehran supporting and funding the Assad regime and Ankara supporting and hosting members of the opposition.”
Syria stopped helping the rebel PKK a few years back when relations with Turkey warmed up. Now, with Turkey having turning against the regime of Bashir Al-Assad, it would be logical for Syria to once again allow PKK activity in its territory.
But Cagaptay says, “Since Damascus is aware that it would likely face a Turkish invasion if it were to allow PKK attacks from its territory into Turkey, it has turned to its ally Tehran for assistance.
“Tehran, already annoyed that Turkey is trying to diminish Iranian influence in Iraq, has been glad to help. Iran desperately needs to end Turkey’s policy of confronting Assad. If not countered, this policy will usher in the end of the Assad regime in Syria, costing Iran its precious Levantine client state. Hence, Iran’s age-old strategy against Turkey has been resuscitated: using the PKK to attack Ankara from another country in order to pressure Turkey.
“Accordingly, since the beginning of summer 2010, the PKK has attacked Turkey from Iraq, killing almost 150 Turks as well as kidnapping dozens of people.
Cagaptay calls this the “PKK circle” wherein the more people Assad kills, the more Turkey turns against Syria and the more the Islamic Republic tries to deter Turkey through PKK attacks from Iraq.
“In the long term,” Cagaptay says, “the Turkish-Iranian rivalry will bring Ankara closer to Washington, and perhaps even to Israel, or at least halt further deterioration of Turkish-Israeli ties.”
Returning to Iraq, he says events there already promote more cooperation between Washington and Ankara. “With the United States having withdrawn its troops from Iraq, Turkey and Iran will be competing economically and politically to gain influence in Iraq, and this issue is already bringing Ankara closer to Washington,” Cagaptay writes.
He notes that Iranian officials are now threatening Turkey almost daily. He cites Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi’s military adviser, Major General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, who warned last October: “Turkey must radically rethink its policies on Syria, the NATO missile shield and promoting Muslim secularism in the Arab world or face trouble from its own people and neighbors.”
Cagaptay argues that fraying relations with Iran drove, at least in part, Ankara’s decision last year to host part of NATO’s missile defense project, aimed at detecting any Iranian missile firings. “In fact, this decision can be seen as the sharpest Turkish rebuke to Iran over the past decade,” Cagaptay says.
He concludes: “Today’s Middle East-oriented Turkey, anchored in NATO, is a greater threat to Iranian interests than the merely pro-Western Turkey of the past.”
