For decades, Türkiye’s secular establishment viewed Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a cautionary tale. When Ruhollah Khomeini, returned to hijack the spirit of revolution that overthrew the Shah and thereafter change the course of Iran’s, future, Türkiye was watching. Alongside the spectre of Kurdish separatism, Ankara saw political Islam as an existential threat. Tehran’s bid to export political Islam via ideological proxies clashed with Ankara’s vision of order for the Middle East.
While often described as “frenemies,” both Iran and Türkiye recognise that a zero-sum contest for regional dominance is not sustainable. They have competed for influence in both Iraq and Syria. Iraqi Kurdistan is an area where Iran and Türkiye have indirectly clashed through local factions, as Türkiye fights Kurdish separatists.
In Syria, the two states backed opposing sides since the outbreak of the uprising there in 2011, with Iran’s intervention in the early stages of the uprising proving pivotal to keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power for another decade.
Yet it was Türkiye that had the last laugh. It supported anti-Assad factions in the north, based in Idlib, and those fighters—led by Ahmed al-Sharaa and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—launched their assault in November last year, quickly clearing regime forces from Syria’s major cities, before finally arriving in Damascus virtually unopposed two weeks later, as Assad’s army fled.
Impact of Iran defeat
Both Iraq and Syria are home to sizeable Kurdish populations, and Ankara has long accused Iran of covertly mobilising separatist groups against Türkiye. Yet this bad blood does not mean that Türkiye and Iran are at daggers drawn.
They share a 560km border and have interdependencies, relying on each other in areas such as gas exports. Some think Türkiye may have benefited from Israeli and American strikes against Iran last month, but for Turkish leaders, the implications are sobering.
Ankara has little to gain from a fragmented Iran, especially if it is engulfed by ethnic insurgencies that trigger a wave of refugees. Ankara will also feel uneasy at Washington’s decision to engage in direct military action in the Middle East in support of Israel. Even though Türkiye is a NATO member and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoys a close relationship with President Trump, there is an overarching concern that the US is fully behind Israel’s unilateral militarism in the region since October 2023.