Turkey plays defense against Iran

Reacting to Iranian moves is an untenable strategy for the Turks

Since it reemerged as a major player in the Middle East in the late 2000s, Turkey has consistently encountered the same obstacle to even greater regional influence: Iran. With an almost two-decade head start, the Iranians dominate Turkey’s southern flank, enabling them to block Turkish advances while expanding and consolidating their own influence. Even the more than five-month-old war in Gaza, transformative as it has been and may be, has ultimately only enhanced Tehran’s position. For Turkey, this situation is unacceptable and informs its strategies for the Middle East and the South Caucasus.

Given the salience in the Arab and Muslim worlds of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Turkey has to focus on bringing an end to the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and displaced well over a million others. Publicly, Ankara is engaged in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to halt the conflict, address the humanitarian crisis and end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. But important though these goals may be for Ankara, it expects that realizing them will take a long time and will proceed only in stages.

Strategically, a much greater national security concern for Turkey is Iran’s regional expansionism. But Turkey cannot afford at this time to criticize a fellow Muslim country, particularly one that has adroitly created a perception among the regional masses as the defender of the Palestinians. Instead, Turkey has had to obscure its concerns about Iran in the form of perfunctory diplomatic statements – like those seen at the Jan. 24 joint press conference between the Turkish and Iranian presidents – highlighting joint condemnation of Israel’s actions, shared support for Palestinian statehood and a desire to prevent the Gaza conflict from escalating into a wider regional war.

However, the reality is that the war has already metastasized into a regional conflict. Though Ankara has publicly condemned the United States and the United Kingdom for airstrikes in Yemen targeting the Houthis, it is deeply alarmed by Tehran’s role in prompting its Yemeni proxy to disrupt international shipping in the Red Sea. Pandemonium in the region benefits Iran, whose strategy is predicated on undermining the regional security architecture. In the long run, Turkey will have to deal with the Iranian threat, as the alternative – putting out fires that the Iranians keep fanning – is untenable.

In Ankara as well as Washington and other allied capitals, there is an apparent belief that the way to counter Iran is to address the Palestinian issue so that Tehran can no longer exploit it.

The problem is that, though the war in Gaza is likely nearing its end, achieving Palestinian sovereignty will be a lengthy project, especially given the problems endemic to both Israeli and Palestinian politics. Therefore, even a ceasefire would be susceptible to Iranian exploitation.

Additionally, Tehran is well-positioned to create havoc in other regions. For example, Iran probably cannot be dislodged from Iraq and Syria anytime soon. And if the Turks can’t expel Iran from two of their immediate neighbors, then Yemen is certainly out of reach. Therefore, Tehran will retain the initiative in the Middle East; Ankara can only react.

This is a frustrating situation for Turkey’s leaders, who see a direct line between their predicament and the U.S. decision to impose regime change in Iraq in 2003 while failing to do more to support the rebellion in Syria a decade later. From the Turkish perspective, the decisions of two successive U.S. administrations enabled Iranian strategic ambitions. They argue, with some merit, that if Washington had not toppled the Baathist regime in Baghdad, then Iraq likely would not have fallen into the Iranian orbit. Similarly, they say that had the U.S. supported the Sunni rebels in Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring uprising against the Assad regime, it could have denied Iran critical real estate and even dealt a major blow to Russia. Turkey and the U.S. also disagreed about the threat from the Islamic State group. For Turkey, Kurdish separatism was a far greater threat than IS, which was the American priority. Making matters worse for Ankara, Washington aligned with Syrian Kurds to dismantle the IS caliphate.

For now, the U.S. is preoccupied with more important strategic matters, such as the war in Ukraine, managing the China challenge, and political and economic problems at home. Washington will help contain Tehran, but Ankara will have to take the lead.

Due to its own economic struggles, there is little that Turkey can do in the short term in the Middle East besides take defensive measures. In the South Caucasus, however, Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan has the upper hand over Iran’s ally Armenia. The Turks will likely use this advantage to pressure Iran along its northern frontier while trying to limit – and, conditions permitting, roll back – the Iranian strategic blockade in the Levant.