{"id":20001,"date":"2010-06-22T19:22:39","date_gmt":"2010-06-22T17:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=20001"},"modified":"2023-04-06T15:51:25","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T12:51:25","slug":"iran-and-turkey-friends-today-rivals-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/06\/22\/iran-and-turkey-friends-today-rivals-tomorrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran and Turkey: Friends Today, Rivals Tomorrow?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<h1><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 600px; height: 450px; border: 0pt none; margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt;\" src=\"https:\/\/gdb.rferl.org\/23A6A403-8729-4F31-97EB-85F0C29B8BD8_mw800_mh600_s.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>Monday, 21 June 2010 23:37<\/div>\n<p>Written by <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/rferl.html\">RFE\/RL<\/span><\/p>\n<div><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/201006213667\/iran-and-turkey-friends-today-rivals-tomorrow.html#comments\">0  Comments<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/component\/option,com_mailto\/link,aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ldXJhc2lhcmV2aWV3LmNvbS8yMDEwMDYyMTM2NjcvaXJhbi1hbmQtdHVya2V5LWZyaWVuZHMtdG9kYXktcml2YWxzLXRvbW9ycm93Lmh0bWw=\/tmpl,component\/\"><\/span> <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/201006213667\/iran-and-turkey-friends-today-rivals-tomorrow\/Print.html\"><\/span> <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/pdf\/201006213667\/iran-and-turkey-friends-today-rivals-tomorrow.pdf\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-5682875049565977\";\n\/* 250x250, created 6\/18\/10 *\/\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"6493880630\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 250;\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script> <script src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\n<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\ngoogle_protectAndRun(\"ads_core.google_render_ad\", google_handleError, google_render_ad);\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><ins><ins><\/ins><\/ins><\/div>\n<p><!-- google_ad_section_start -->By Robert  Tait<\/p>\n<p>(RFE\/RL)  &#8212; It is the friendship Western policymakers wish they could have  prevented: Turkey &#8212; secular, Western-leaning, and a key member of NATO  &#8212; drawing close to a resurgent theocratic Iran whose nuclear program  and geopolitical ambitions present a full-frontal challenge to the  established international order.<\/p>\n<p>Suspicions that Turkey is abandoning the Western orbit for a closer  alignment with its Muslim Middle Eastern neighbors were reinforced last  month when the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, flew to  Tehran to sign a nuclear fuel-swap deal &#8212; brokered along with the  Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva &#8212; aimed at blocking  further UN sanctions against Iran&#8217;s uranium enrichment program.<\/p>\n<p>Coming  on the back of flourishing trade ties, the move &#8212; ultimately  unsuccessful &#8212; was seen as a manifestation of Erdogan&#8217;s growing  affinity for Iran and its president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, whom he had  previously described as &#8220;a very good friend.&#8221; The image of a new  Tehran-Ankara axis was further enhanced by Israel&#8217;s deadly interception  of a Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla on May 31, which led to the deaths  of nine Turks and drew international condemnation. The incident created  the impression of a united Turkish-Iranian front against Israel and in  support of Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>The growing  warmth is a far cry from the frosty, mutually suspicious relations that  endured for years between the two neighbors following the 1979 Islamic  Revolution which ousted the Western-backed shah from power in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Yet,  according to some analysts, there may be a sting in the tail.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Trigger  Suspicions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Far from being the gateway to a  long-standing alliance, Turkey&#8217;s new engagement with the Middle East and  vocal support for the Palestinians could trigger Iranian suspicions and  eventually restore the formerly competitive relationship between the  two countries.<\/p>\n<p>Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst with the  MEEPAS think tank in Israel, believes Turkey&#8217;s new Middle East-centered  foreign policy &#8212; which includes rapprochement with Iran&#8217;s close ally,  Syria &#8212; is a threat to Tehran&#8217;s desire to be the Islamic world&#8217;s  dominant power.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Both countries are rivals for the same title,  which is leader of the Islamic world,&#8221; Javedanfar says. &#8220;And the  Iranians have a set of economic and political advantages to offer any  country who wants to side with them, and the Turks have another set of  advantages which are far more than the Iranian ones.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 600px; height: 450px; border: 0pt none; margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt;\" src=\"https:\/\/gdb.rferl.org\/86FF5EFB-C746-4AF7-BD26-779BD1A441D7_mw800_s.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>&#8220;I can best  describe it as the Turkish government being able to offer business class  seats to any potential customer who wants to ally itself with Turkey,  and the Iranians can offer a coach or economic class. I think the  majority of people are going to be attracted to the business class  rather than the other one, unless they have to.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If that  assessment comes as a relief to Western diplomats fretting over Turkey&#8217;s  supposed defection, there may be a sobering corollary. Javedanfar fears  the results of any renewed Iranian-Turkish rivalry will be greater  efforts by the leadership in Tehran to acquire a nuclear-weapons  capability.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When it comes to economic power, when it comes to  military power, when it comes to diplomatic position, Iran is inferior  to Turkey,&#8221; Javedanfar says. &#8220;So they are going to look at areas where  they are superior and the only other one where they can gain an edge  over the Turks, one of the very few areas, is the nuclear program.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Turkey  is not a nuclear power. Therefore, Iran would have even more of a  reason and an excuse to become a nuclear power in order to gain an edge  over their Turkish rivals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Likely Launch Pad<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The  prediction may seem far-fetched, yet hardly more so than an article  published earlier this year by the Jahan News website &#8212; believed to be  linked to the Iranian intelligence services &#8212; that identified Turkey as  the likely launch pad for a future war against Iran. Written by Farid  Al Din Hadad Adel, grandson of Iran&#8217;s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali  Khamenei, the article asked: &#8220;Which country can hope for the entry of  its European and American friends into the arena of war, if it enters  into war against us? The answer is clear. Turkey is the only option for  the advancement of the West&#8217;s ambitions.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Islamic regime has a  history of suspiciousness towards Turkey. In 2005, the Revolutionary  Guards closed Tehran&#8217;s newly built Imam Khomeini Airport for &#8220;security  reasons&#8221; because a Turkish company had been awarded the contract to run  it. The airport was only reopened after the contract was canceled and  awarded to an Iranian consortium. In the same year, the Turkish  mobile-phone operator Turkcell was stripped of a $2 billion contract  giving it a stake in a private Iranian mobile network.<\/p>\n<p>Murat  Bilhan, vice chairman of the Istanbul-based think tank TASAM and who  served as a Turkish diplomat in Iran, believes continuing Iranian  disquiet over its Western neighbor has recently surfaced in its  rejection of Ankara&#8217;s offer of mediation in relations with the United  States. Even the recent nuclear swap deal may have been accepted only  because of Brazil&#8217;s role, he suggests.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Iran feels itself a  little split off from the Western connections because it&#8217;s in the hands  of Turkey,&#8221; says Bilhan. &#8220;They feel rivalry, as a competitor, and they  would not like Turkey to be stronger than Iran. That&#8217;s the feeling in  Iran, in Iranian statesmen, in Iranian decision makers, policy planners,  and such.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So Turkey, for Iran, is, in a way, not a threat but  something to get along [with], to share the same geography, not to  create any problems, but not to be overwhelmed by.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Afraid  Of Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A further source of potential friction could be  Turkey&#8217;s increasing closeness to Arab states in the Persian Gulf, most  of which fear Tehran&#8217;s nuclear activities, Bilhan says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There  are some contradictions in the Turkish position in the sense that Turkey  should be aware that the Arab nations in the Persian are too much  afraid of Iran and they just feel threatened by the Iranian existence  and Iranian ambitions in the region, especially their nuclear  ambitions,&#8221; Bilhan says. &#8220;So when Turkey supports the Iranian position,  it might contradict its own Arab policy because the Arabs have enmity  towards Iran.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Turkish officials argue that Turkey&#8217;s geography  and shared Muslim heritage make it uniquely qualified in the Western  alliance to win Iran&#8217;s trust. In private, they admit that negotiations  with the Islamic regime can be fraught &#8212; citing the Iranian political  system&#8217;s diverse power centers. They also say the two countries still  have important differences, notably over Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are not  defending Iran, we are looking after our own interests&#8221; one Turkish  official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told RFERL. &#8220;We don&#8217;t want  to see a nuclear Iran in the military sense at all. Our aim in that is  the same as other countries. It&#8217;s just our approach that&#8217;s different.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He  added: &#8220;On Iraq, we don&#8217;t see eye-to-eye with Iran at all. We want an  all-inclusive government in Iraq made up Shi&#8217;ites, Sunnis, and Kurds,  whereas Iran only wants a Shi&#8217;ite government. We are not always in  parallel with Iran on many issues.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I don&#8217;t think they should  see us as a rival. The fact that we can talk to almost everyone, in  contrast to them, means Iran should use us to try and get back into the  international community. That&#8217;s what we are trying to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!-- google_ad_section_end --><\/p>\n<div><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/rferl.html\"><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/rferl.html\">RFE\/RL<\/span><\/h4>\n<p>Copyright (c) 2009. RFE\/RL, Inc.  Reprinted with the permission of    Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty,  1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington    DC 20036.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, 21 June 2010 23:37 Written by RFE\/RL 0 Comments By Robert Tait (RFE\/RL) &#8212; It is the friendship Western policymakers wish they could have prevented: Turkey &#8212; secular, Western-leaning, and a key member of NATO &#8212; drawing close to a resurgent theocratic Iran whose nuclear program and geopolitical ambitions present a full-frontal challenge to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":28091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[145,1571,78,1779,120,3044,1153],"class_list":["post-20001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-barack-obama","tag-ahmet-davutoglu","tag-ergenekon","tag-european-parliament","tag-gulen","tag-mavi-marmara","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}