Many know that Turkey and Iran competed in other areas in the '90s, such as the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is also well known that Iran is critical of Turkey for the latter's cooperation with NATO and the US in various fields.
Interestingly, Turkey has acted very tolerantly of Tehran in the last decade. Ankara has tried to mediate negotiations between Iran and the international community. Ankara has also been against any kind of unilateral agenda towards Iran. Despite many serious problems, Turkey has taken quite a sensitive approach to Tehran. But has Iran acknowledged this, or rewarded Turkey for it? I do not think one can answer this question in the affirmative.
Turco-Iranian bilateral relations have almost become mechanisms for opposing Turkey's demands. Why? Paradoxically, Iran has defined itself as an exceptional country since the 1979 revolution. From nuclear energy issues to the UN system, Iran has not hesitated to deviate from the international community on the basis of its own calculations. Naturally, this has led to Iran's addiction to a kind of pragmatism in foreign policy. Tehran's calculation is as simple as this: Ankara would not risk breaking with Iran. This calculation is not totally wrong. Turkey's main needs, which include energy and regional trade, tie this country to Iran. A separate fact is that criticizing Iran is, interestingly, not easy in Turkey. Even secular politicians and intellectuals take any criticism of Iran as a new form of siding with imperialism.
However, Tehran's policies in Syria and Iraq are now very costly to Ankara. Moreover, when it serves its interests, Tehran does not refrain from supporting even ultra-authoritarian regimes such as the one in Damascus. The moralist discourse that Tehran has championed since 1979 is not extended to the Syrian case. It seems that this discourse is reserved exclusively for Israel and the US. One may, of course, be critical of any Western intervention in Syrian politics. Open-minded Iranians know very well that Tehran's support for the Assad regime is becoming a burden for the whole Muslim world.
It is time for Ankara to recognize that there are serious differences between it and Tehran's regional visions. All in all, Iran's lack of democracy limits the scope of this country's foreign policy. Iran cannot generate the soft power that would show it to be a natural supporter of all pro-democratic movements in the Islamic world. Similarly, Ankara should recognize that cooperation with authoritarian countries has its natural limits. As the perfect example, Ankara's experience with Syria should have taught it that cooperation with an authoritarian state has to be managed very carefully, as authoritarian regimes' top priority is not trade but regime survival.
Meanwhile, the competition over Iraq between Turkey and Iran has certain meanings for the larger democratization debate in the Middle East. One is that it is now vital to have an effective political system in Iraq, one in which Shiite groups are successfully integrated. In other words, the failure of the
Iraqi model will be a victory of the authoritarian approach in the Shiite world. I am not saying, however, that the democracy approach has won in the Sunni world. Indeed, if the larger part of Shiite and Sunni communities do not make a pragmatic turn to democratic models, they will definitely reactivate the traditional sectarian or tribal networks that normally end up with various authoritarian models.
