Iran — with Russia’s help — is evidently trying to punish Turkey for its support for the pro-democracy movement in Syria.
When the Syrian uprising started in 2011, Iran and Turkey contemplated working together to contain the crisis — but it soon became clear that the two were pulling in opposite directions.
Tempted by neo-Ottoman dreams and under growing pressure from Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Arab states, Turkey began to back regime change in Syria.
Iran, facing internal divisions on how to react to the Arab Spring, at first couldn’t find a coherent Syria policy. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seemed amenable to having Bashar al-Assad step aside in exchange for his Ba’ath Party sharing power in a transitional period.
But “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei took the Syrian dossier away from Ahmadinejad. He sent his own emissaries to Damascus to “stiffen Assad’s backbone,” in the words of one Tehran source. He then sent envoys to Moscow to coordinate policy with Russia — where Vladimir Putin was also determined to keep Assad in power.
The stage was set for a clash with Turkey, now intensifying in the context of a new struggle to determine the future of the Middle East.
On one side, most Arab states — led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia — are working for regime change in Syria. Britain and, to a lesser extent, France side with them.
The United States lacks a coherent stance. The State Department is promoting active support to topple Assad, but the White House is reluctant to get involved beyond token gestures and occasional “intelligence” support for the uprising.
Iran and Russia have adopted the preservation of Assad as a strategic goal. They are supported by part of the Iraqi administration, the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese government and peripheral Arab states such as Sudan. Turkey finds itself at the center of this rivalry, if only because its longest border is with Syria.
The Iran-Russia tandem was initially wary of provoking a clash with the Turks, for fear it might lead to US involvement. But once they saw that Washington wouldn’t get involved, at least not before the Nov. 6 election, they decided to teach Turkey a lesson.
Last week, the Tehran daily Kayhan, controlled by Khamenei, warned that “the fire in Syria will spread to Turkey.”
The “lesson” has three facets.
1) Swamp Turkey with Syrian refugees. This is achieved partly by making it more difficult for Syrians to escape to Lebanon or Iraq.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has sent fighters to the border to terrorize and even massacre Syrians fleeing the Assad death machine. In Iraq, the army has sealed the border to prevent Syrians from entering.
Ethnic Kurds and Turkmen are a sizeable chunk of the population along the Turko-Syrian border, with kith and kin on both sides facilitating passage. By Turkish estimates, over 200,000 Syrians have already fled to Turkey. This week, Ankara approved the building of new camps to receive half a million refugees.
2) Reactivate the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, an armed group that long fought for a Marxist state in southeastern Turkey.
In 2010, after 30 years of fighting that claimed 48,000 lives, the PKK was all but extinct militarily. But Tehran has now financed, armed and unleashed it against Turkey, which it often enters from bases in Iran.
Since February, the PKK has provoked 27 clashes, causing the death of over 800 people, a quarter of them Ankara’s soldiers. The latest clash, on Sunday, claimed 43 lives, including 10 Turkish troops.
Meanwhile, Turkey has arrested two Iranian intelligence officers and an unknown number of Hezbollah militants on suspicion of espionage for PKK.
3) Economic pressure. Iran, the main source of oil and natural gas for Turkey, is scaling down supplies. It is also reducing transit trade through Turkey. Russia has meanwhile all but frozen economic cooperation with Turkey and is setting hurdles to Turkish trade with Central Asia.
A NATO member and a US ally since the 1940s, Turkey must not be left alone to fight the Irano-Russian tandem, a dark alliance out to stop the Arab Spring from liberating Syria.