Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Turkey And Iran: Competition And Confrontation

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Turkey And Iran: Competition And Confrontation

    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.

Working...
X