Winning Turkey’s Support on Iran
There’s enough Turkey for everyone this season. The United States has Ankara’s support for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and the Islamic Republic of Iran enjoys Ankara’s backing of the Iranian nuclear program. One day, however, Turkey will need to choose whose side it is on. With the American and Turkish foreign policy preferences increasingly divergent, Washington may lose an important ally in the region vital to its security, unless it reinvigorates its strategic partnership with Turkey and starts paying more attention to Turkey’s security concerns.
It is the prime minister of Turkey, a state that has been a Western ally for over half a century, who now publicly supports the President of Iran. Last week, Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a friend and accused the West of treating Iran unfairly. Erdogan reaffirmed Iran’s peaceful intentions and pointed out that Iran’s loudest critics are states possessing the largest nuclear arsenals themselves.
Erdogan’s public support for Ahmadinejad should come as no surprise to an attentive observer of Ankara’s foreign policy. Iranian-Turkish relations have warmed considerably over the past few years, and Tehran and Ankara now closely cooperate in economy, energy, and security.
Bilateral trade between Iran and Turkey reached $7 billion in 2008. This month, quite symbolically, they agreed to bypass the dollar and euro trading through their own currencies. More importantly, Iran supplies one fifth of Turkey’s energy needs. And, as if to spite Washington, Ankara and Tehran are considering transferring gas from Turkmenistan to Turkey and Europe through an Iranian pipeline. What brings the two states even closer together is their fight against the Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq and radicalized by the US intervention. Turkey and Iran have signed several security cooperation agreements and are now collaborating on securing their borders.
Turkey has been a key US ally for so long that it is hard to believe that its support could end. Yet this does not look improbable when one considers Ankara’s growing ambitions and its unrealized hopes for acceptance in the West, including the EU accession. Turkey’s foreign policy is becoming increasingly independent as it allies with friends and foes of the West alike and has acquired economic ties to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, Central Asia, and the Gulf states. Turkey is now even partnering with Syria, an enemy a decade ago.
Even so, Ankara’s independent foreign policy does not have to be incompatible with maintaining a strategic partnership with Washington. In fact, if managed properly, Turkey’s activism in the Middle East could become an opportunity for the United States. Bordering Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus, Turkey has all attributes of a mediator between the Middle East and the West, and Ankara could successfully play this role in solving the Iranian nuclear issue. Of course, this would be impossible were the United States to lose Turkey’s friendship.
Thus, it is necessary to find a way to tie together the US and Turkish interests without limiting Turkey’s reach and appeal in the Middle East. Ironically, a sure way of accomplishing that would be allowing Tehran to join the nuclear club. Already being the only Middle Eastern state capable of frustrating Turkey’s regional ambitions, Iran would then become a serious security threat for Turkey. Of course, waiting for Iran’s nuclear capabilities to grow enough to start worrying Turkey is an unacceptable policy option for the international community. A better approach is for the United States to reset the US-Turkish strategic relationship by addressing Turkey’s security needs.
One possible area of US-Turkish cooperation is dealing with the common security threat emanating from Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This can hardly be accomplished by harping on Iran’s violations of the nuclear non-proliferation regime or sanctioning Iran.
Right now, not a single one of the six states involved in the talks over Iran’s nuclear program follow Islam or are located in the Middle East. Being a NATO member and having good ties with Iran, Turkey should be offered a more active role in negotiating Iran’s nuclear program. Were Turkey to realize that its role in accomplishing progress on Iran could help advance its influence in the Middle East, it would become a more willing and reliable ally.
Washington’s recently discarded missile defense system plans in Poland and the Czech Republic would have done nothing to protect Turkey and only increased its disenchantment with the West. Whatever the technical merits of missile defense, if such a system is to be installed, it could at least bring some foreign policy gains. The new missile defense system, for example, could secure Turkey as well as Europe, and Ankara could even be offered to become a part of this system.
In addition to these steps, the United States should put more effort into defusing tensions between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership and take measures to help Turkey contain the PKK. The problem of Iraqi Kurds is where Washington, Tehran, and Ankara could find common ground before moving on to the more contentious issue of nuclear proliferation.
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Mr. Erdogan and Turkey are not worried about Iran and its nuclear program because they don’t have the Zionists to constantly scare them into believing Iran’s nuclear program is a threat. We are the only one in the world who allow such ridiculous Zionist propaganda to draw us into a war we don’t need as it did in Iraq. Tail waging the dog.
Comment on November 6, 2009 @ 1:41 pm