With Iran Visit, Turkish PM Hopes to Preserve Tenuous Status Quo

Turkish premier Ahmet Davutoglu paid his first official visit to Iran as prime minister this weekend. Following his meeting with Iran's First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, news reports indicated that the two leaders agreed to increase trade from $10 billion to $30 billion. Ankara and Tehran have long maintained friendly ties through trade incentives, including a strong energy partnership. However, the countries’ irreconcilable differences over the Syrian war for the last four years cloud the economic outlook.

Turkey and Iran have backed opposing sides in the Syrian conflict since its inception, but tensions are now at a boiling point. Ankara burned its bridges with Moscow, a key Iranian ally in Syria, when it shot down a Russian jet that had violated its airspace in November. Since then, the Kremlin has all but declared Turkey an enemy, deploying aircraft in neighboring Armenia and supporting Syrian Kurds, whom Ankara considers among its gravest national security threats.

Even if Turkey can isolate its relationship with Iran from its tensions with Russia, Ankara’s deepening cooperation with Saudi Arabia – Tehran’s top regional rival – continues to disgruntle the Islamic Republic. The Turkish-Saudi rapprochement has challenged the two neighbors’ relationship ever since Turkey joined the Saudi-led coalition to battle Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen last March. Saudi jets are now deployed in Turkey to battle the Islamic State, and speculation swirls of a bilateral military operation in Syria that would counter Iranian influence as well.

Feeling threatened by a hostile Russia, the Islamic State, and Kurdish militants, Turkey is keen on preserving its modus vivendi with Iran whereby neither party confronts the other despite clashing national interests. To maintain this balance, Davutoglu on Saturday emphasized the vast economic opportunities it can offer Iran, particularly since the recent lifting of international sanctions pursuant to last summer’s nuclear deal. Calling the two neighbors’ economies “complementary,” Davutoglu expressed his hope to more than triple Turkish-Iranian trade.

But it won’t be easy. Amid an escalating Iranian media offensive against Ankara, the Turkish-Iranian relationship appears more tenuous than ever. As Turkey and Iran strengthen their alliances with each other’s regional rivals, their divergent foreign policies are becoming harder to ignore. And with sanctions relief reducing Iran’s economic dependence on Turkey, Ankara’s ability to leverage its economic interests is likely to diminish. Given Turkey and Iran’s competing goals in Syria, a fallout with Tehran, similar to the current crisis with Moscow, may still be on the horizon.

Merve Tahiroglu is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on Twitter @MerveTahiroglu