Turkey Analyst Articles (6)
The Turkey Triangle: Ankara, Moscow, Tehran
By Richard Weitz (10 April 2013 issue of the Turkey Analyst)
Turkey has been using its energy and economic links with Russia and Iran to manage their political differences. Turkey’s relations with Russia improved considerably during the past decade, but those with Iran saw only a modest upturn due to enduring differences over regional security and religious-ideological principles. But in the past year, Turkey’s diverging response to the Arab Spring and especially the Syrian Civil War has strained both partnerships. No one talks anymore of an emerging Turkey-Iran-Russia axis in the heart of Eurasia.
From Fear to Absurdity: Turkey's Continued Politicized Court Cases
By Gareth Jenkins (10 April 2013 issue of the Turkey Analyst)
On April 4, 2013, Turkey’s notorious Ergenekon trial took another twist when prosecutors accused one of suspects of murdering former President Turgut Özal in 1993, just four months after a judicial review had failed to find any evidence of foul play in Özal’s death. On April 9, 2013, prosecutors launched a judicial investigation against members of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) for “inciting the public to participate in illegal meetings and demonstrations” after they helped organize protests outside the courthouse in Silivri, west of Istanbul, where the Ergenekon hearings are being held. Such developments have reinforced already grave concerns not just about the cases themselves but about prospects for the rule of law in Turkey.
BACKGROUND: Since the Ergenekon investigation was first launched in 2007, it has become the most controversial court case in modern Turkish history and spawned a plethora of other, highly politicized judicial trials. Some have subsequently been merged into the main Ergenekon case. Others have been heard separately. In total, nearly 2,000 people have been taken into custody and over 1,000 have been charged. Initially, the investigations primarily targeted secular Turkish nationalists. Apparently emboldened by the muted reaction, prosecutors then turned their attention to serving and retired members of the Turkish military, which had long regarded itself as the primary guardian of secularism in the country. In recent years, they have begun to pursue a disparate array of leftists and liberals whose only common denominator appears to be opposition to the Turkish Islamist movement, particularly the followers of the exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen.
The charges against the military personnel accuse them of running an improbably large spy rings and/or plotting to stage coups. Many have also been charged with membership of Ergenekon, which the prosecutors claim is a vast clandestine organization which has been responsible for every act of political or racist violence in Turkey over the last 25 years and which also controls every terrorist group active in the country – whether leftist, Islamist or Kurdish nationalist. Suspects who are not members of the military have been charged with belonging to Ergenekon and attempting to destabilize the country in preparation for a military takeover. Extraordinarily for such a huge number of suspects, there have been no confessions. Indeed, none of the accused has admitted even to being aware of a coup plot or the existence of an organization called Ergenekon.
All of the cases have followed a similar pattern. They have started with an anonymous “tipoff” –by telephone, letter or email – detailing the location of allegedly incriminating evidence against a number of named individuals, such as arms caches and documents stored on digital media. The police have then raided the locations and recovered the material described by the informant. The raids have been followed by vigorous press campaigns by media outlets owned by Gülen’s supporters, detailing not only what was found but the suspects’ allegedly dastardly intentions. Many of these reports have later been shown to be inaccurate or invented. But, particularly at first, they served to condition public perceptions of the investigations. The Gülen Movement’s media outlets have also played the leading role in defamation campaigns against those who have questioned the conduct of the cases.
Suspects have been charged in prodigiously long indictments, often running to thousands of pages full of contradictions and absurdities. In August 2010, Police Chief Hanefi Avci, a rightist and former Gülen sympathizer, wrote a book detailing how cases such as Ergenekon were being run by a cabal of Gülen’s supporters in the police and judicial system. In September 2010, Avci was arrested. He is currently in prison accused of belonging to Ergenekon.
The main Turkish institution responsible for domestic and foreign intelligence gathering is the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). MİT has requested court permits for thousands of telephone intercepts against suspected members of the militant groups which prosecutors claim are controlled by Ergenekon. But MİT has yet to request any permits for suspected members of “Ergenekon” itself, which suggests that it is well aware that the organization does not exist.
IMPLICATIONS: It would be a mistake to dismiss cases such as Ergenekon as merely the product of paranoia. There is considerable evidence that something much more sinister is happening – and that the prosecutors are being inadvertently assisted by the indifference and naivety of Turkey’s allies, international human rights organizations and bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The cases include numerous instances in which digital evidence has clearly been being fabricated and planted, sometimes even in the wrong location. For example, on August 4, 2012, after an apparent mix-up over addresses, a police team raided the apartment of a naval officer called Emrah Küçükakça and “discovered” a mass of incriminating digital evidence on computer disks, CDs and DVDs. But the “evidence” all incriminated someone called Emrah Karaca. Nevertheless, Küçükakça was held in prison for eleven months before being released. No disciplinary action has been taken against the police officers involved.
Turkey is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, applications to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the substance of a case can only be made when the domestic judicial process, including any appeals, has been exhausted. For ongoing cases, the ECHR’s remit is restricted to procedural issues.
In September 2008, Tuncay Özkan, the owner of the secularist KanalTürk television channel, was charged with membership of Ergenekon. He has been in prison pending the completion of his trial ever since. Özkan applied to the ECHR, arguing that that his pre-verdict detention was excessive. In December 2011, the ECHR rejected his application, citing a statement by prosecutors that hand grenades had been found in his possession. This was not true. At the time of Özkan’s arrest, the police had raided KanalTürk and found three empty grenade casings -- such as are sold on the internet as ornamental oil lamps – on the desk of another member of staff. The police forensic report presented to the court in Istanbul clearly states that they had found only three empty casings without explosives or detonators.
More egregious is what has become known as the Balyoz, or “Sledgehammer” investigation, which is the only one of the cases in which verdicts have been delivered. On September 21, 2012, a total of 331 serving and retired members of the military were sentenced to lengthy prison terms after being found guilty of planning to stage a coup in 2003. The Balyoz indictment alleges that the plot was discussed a military seminar in Istanbul on March 5-7, 2003. All of the evidence comes from a purported coup plan on a CD which prosecutors claim was burned on March 5, 2003 and not subsequently amended. However, in addition to containing dozens of anachronisms, forensic reports on the CD’s metadata have demonstrated that the 2003 coup plan was written using Microsoft Office 2007. In January 2013, the court published a 1,435 page explanation of its verdict, in which it claimed that, whenever a Microsoft Office file is opened with a version older than the one in which it was originally written, it is automatically updated to the new format. This is not only patently untrue but contradicts the prosecutors’ claim that the CD had not been amended since March 2003.
Commodore Cem Aziz Çakmak, one of the naval officers convicted in the Balyoz case, appealed to the ECHR. In a ruling published on February 19, 2013, the ECHR rejected Çakmak’s application because his case had yet to complete the domestic appeal process. Extraordinarily, even though the ECHR’s remit did not include evaluating the evidence, the ruling stated that Çakmak’s case file contained “information which would satisfy an objective observer that the applicant could have committed the offense for which he was prosecuted.”
Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that those driving the cases feel little reason to exercise restraint. In a country where little happens that cannot be attributed to a conspiracy theory, there has long been speculation about President Özal’s death in 1993 at the age of 65. In fact, Özal was very overweight and had a history of severe heart problems. On the morning of April 17, 1993, a day after returning from an exhausting five-country, twelve-day tour of Central Asia, he suffered a massive heart attack following a session on his exercise bicycle. In 2012, amid persistent claims that he had been poisoned, Özal’s body was exhumed and sent for examination. A detailed forensic report was published on December 13, 2012. It stated that it had found no evidence of foul play or any abnormal levels of toxins. Nevertheless, on March 31, 2013, General Hürşit Tolon, one of the suspects in the Ergenekon case, was questioned on suspicion of assassinating Özal. On April 4, 2013, prosecutors completed an indictment against Brigadier General Levent Ersöz, another of the Ergenekon accused, on charges of poisoning Özal.
CONCLUSIONS: The impact of the slew of politicized investigations such as Ergenekon and Balyoz extends well beyond those who have been directly targeted. The cases have played a major role in the creation of the environment of fear, censorship and self-censorship that has recently begun to attract international censure. They have also reinforced already serious concerns about the rule of law in Turkey and whether either the guilty or the innocent can expect justice.
Frustratingly, much of the damage could have been prevented if people inside and outside Turkey had been prepared from the outset to stand up for the rights of those with whom they disagreed. Over the last two years, as leftists and liberals have been targeted, it has become commonplace for people to argue that cases such as Ergenekon started well but subsequently went off track. This is not true. As any detailed examination of the cases will show, the range of victims may have changed but the methods, absurdities, fabrications and abuses of law and due process have remained the same.
Ironically, the cases probably now also pose a challenge to the Gulen Movement itself. Even if it continues to try to distance itself from the cabal of officials driving the cases, the Movement’s relentless defense of the investigations has meant that it has become increasingly associated with them in the eyes of both Turkish and international observers. As international awareness of the realities of the cases continues to grow, the Gülen Movement’s reputation is likely to suffer.
What the Columnists Say?
The peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) remain the single most important issue for the commentators in the Turkish press. The announcement of the names of the “wise people” who have been selected by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to inform the public about the peace process was in general greeted with satisfaction by the commentators in the mainstream media. The prevailing attitude continues to be that the process and the initiatives that are taken by the government to promote it deserve to be fully supported. However, Turkish nationalist commentators do not mince their words about the peace process, which they are describing and fiercely denouncing as an attack against the Turkish identity of the country.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Turkey's Internal Power Struggle
by Gareth H. Jenkins (02/13/2013 issue of the Turkey Analyst)
In recent weeks, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the highly politicized court cases, such as Ergenekon and Sledgehammer, that have resulted in hundreds of suspects being imprisoned on charges of belonging to terrorist organizations and plotting to stage coups. The result has been a flurry of speculation about possible legislative amendments that would enable the suspects to be released from jail and punitive measures against the followers of the exiled Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, who are widely regarded as being behind the court cases. But the situation has also highlighted the parlous prospects for democracy in Turkey and the power struggle between two essentially authoritarian and intolerant forces.
BACKGROUND: In recent years it has become commonplace to describe the political system in Turkey before the Justice and Development Party (AKK) first came to power in November 2002 as one of “military tutelage”. This is an oversimplification. The Turkish military undoubtedly cast its shadow over the political arena, setting parameters for civilian governments, dictating policy on what it regarded as key issues and suppressing opposition to its main ideological tenets of secularism and Turkish nationalism. But, with the exception of periods such as the three years of direct military rule from 1980 to 1983, its control of politics was less than total. Although the degree varied over time and between policy areas, civilian governments often enjoyed considerable autonomy provided that they remained within certain limits. Nor was the military alone. Like-minded secular Turkish nationalists in the judiciary, bureaucracy and media enthusiastically imposed a similar ideological agenda without any prompting from the military itself.
By the late 1990s, particularly after Turkey became a candidate for EU membership in December 1999, the ability of the military to regulate the political arena had waned. The generals knew that, even if they had wanted to, overthrowing the civilian government and running the country was no longer a viable option – not least because they were convinced that the resultant international opprobrium and isolation would make the country ungovernable. However, this awareness was not shared by the Turkish Islamist movement, many of whose members sincerely believed that the military could stage a coup. It was only in 2007, when the AKP successfully defied a clumsy attempt by the then Chief of Staff General Yaşar Büyükanıt to prevent Abdullah Gül from becoming president, that Turkey’s Islamists finally realized that they no longer had any reason to fear the military. The result was a series of highly controversial judicial cases targeting opponents of the Islamic conservative movement, which have been found to suffer from deep flaws, inconsistencies, and instances of outright fabrication of evidence. In recent years, it has become common for proponents of these cases to try to justify their manifest flaws by arguing that the cases are necessary in order to remove the military from politics. Yet this is misleading: the cases are the consequences, not the cause, of the military’s political impotence. Put simply, if the military had still enjoyed even a fraction of the power it once wielded, the cases would never have come to court.
Nor has there been any genuine attempt to investigate real abuses by the Turkish military. In September 2012, a total of 331 serving and retired military personnel were convicted of plotting a coup – allegedly codenamed Sledgehammer – in 2003. The indictment ran to nearly 1,000 pages and was based on manifestly fabricated evidence. Thus, the “coup plot” dating to 2003 was itself was clearly written using Microsoft Office 2007, a software that had not yet been created at the time. In the Ergenekon case, 275 suspects are charged with membership of a highly-centralized clandestine organization which is alleged to have controlled every terrorist group and been responsible for every act of political violence in Turkey in the last 25 years. As many including this author have demonstrated, the allegation is a patent fiction.(See Silk Road Paper, September 2009, Turkey Analyst, 28 September 2009, 5 July 2010; 4 April 2011 issues) But the various Ergenekon indictments run to nearly 7,000 pages. In contrast, the indictment in the judicial investigation into the 1980 coup and the three years of oppressive military rule that followed – in which hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned and dozens died under torture – names just two suspects and consists of 82 pages.
Over the years, the evidence that the cases are being driven by elements in the Gülen Movement has grown to the point where it is now overwhelming. In what has now become their hallmark, each case has begun with an anonymous tipoff, usually a letter or email, followed by the “discovery” of allegedly incriminating digital documents, prodigiously long indictments and febrile campaigns of distortion and disinformation in media organs controlled by or affiliated with the Gülen movement. The military has been the main target. Over 400 serving and retired military personnel are currently in prison. The only characteristic that the other targets of the cases share is that they are all perceived opponents or rivals of Islamic conservatism in general or the Gülen Movement in particular – such as leftist journalists critical of the movement, (See Turkey Analyst, 4 April 2011) a rightist police chief who detailed the Gülenists’ penetration of the security forces (See Turkey Analyst, 15 September 2010 issue) and charities which provide scholarships for students, and are thus rivals for Gülenist NGOs whose own provision of scholarships is one of the main instruments by which new members are recruited.(See Turkey Analyst, 24 April 2009) In addition to forgery and fabrication, there is also evidence of Gülen sympathizers planting “incriminating” material on suspects, including sometimes in the wrong premises after mixing up addresses. There has even been a confession by a young NCO who detailed how he had been recruited by the Gülen Movement, told to infiltrate the military and then been given fabricated material to plant on a military computer at an airbase in Kayseri in 2009. After a concerted campaign by the Gülenist media, (eg. Today’s Zaman, Zaman 1,Zaman 2, Zaman 3) the culprit is now free and the prosecutor to whom he confessed – Zeki Üçok – is serving seven years in prison, on the basis of a forensic report stating there is no evidence that the culprit had not been hypnotized. (Click here for Turkish language forensic report).
IMPLICATIONS: Relations between Erdoğan and the Gülen Movement have always been strained. However, particularly during the AKP’s early years in power, they were allies of convenience – not least because they shared many perceived opponents and rivals. As a result, Erdoğan made no attempt to interfere when the Gülenist-driven judicial cases resulted in the imprisonment of hundreds of supporters of the previous secular regime and the intimidation into silence of many thousands more. Although he was sometimes uneasy about the influence of a force he did not control, Erdoğan saw no reason to intervene as long as the cases targeted those who he believed could threaten his own grip on power.
The turning point was the general election of June 12, 2011. Despite concerns about Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism and an election campaign marred by abuses of power, the AKP won a third successive term in power with 49.8 percent of the vote. The AKP’s election campaign was based almost entirely on Erdoğan himself. Not surprisingly, Erdoğan regarded the AKP’s landslide victory as an endorsement not only of the party’s policies but of his own increasingly autocratic style of government. He began to push for the replacement of Turkey’s parliamentary system with a presidential one – with himself as president.
During its second term, from 2007 to 2011, the AKP had gradually purged the apparatus of state of virtually all of the remnants of the previous regime. But the result was to remove not only ideologically-driven bureaucrats but also an infrastructure of expertise. More critically, Erdoğan’s autocratic style of government had resulted in the “de-institutionalization” not only of decision-making but also of the formulation of policy. Even relatively minor plans and initiatives became dependent on a direct talimat, “order’, from Erdoğan. As a result, very little information now moves up through the echelons of government unless it is in direct response to a request from Erdoğan himself. The result can be most clearly seen in Turkey’s recent foreign policy, which is being driven by the dreams and ambitions of Erdoğan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, with very little input from the seasoned diplomats in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
This concentration of power in Erdoğan’s hands has accelerated since June 2011 and can be expected to intensify still further if he succeeds in introducing a presidential system. The prospect galvanized the Gülen Movement. In February 2012, a prosecutor viewed as affiliated with the movement attempted to weaken Erdoğan by issuing a summons to intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, an Erdoğan loyalist who was effectively accused of collaborating with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The attempt was rebuffed by Erdoğan, who subsequently instigated a minor purge of suspected Gülen sympathizers from the police and the judiciary. Through late 2012, Erdoğan appeared relatively confident that he had the Gülen Movement under control. However, on January 22, 2013, a court in Izmir accepted an indictment accusing 357 suspects, most of them military personnel, of belonging to a “spying and blackmail ring”. The case has all of the usual Gülenist hallmarks, including an anonymous tipoff, a prodigiously long 1,937 page indictment full of absurdities and contradictions, and little if any solid evidence against any of the accused.
As well as the challenge to his power, Erdoğan has recently become increasingly concerned by the impact of the Gülenist campaign on the Turkish armed forces. The morale of the officer corps has plummeted and so many generals and admirals are in prison that the chain of command has been severely disrupted. Army officers serving in the war against the PKK are often wary of obeying orders for fear that, if anything goes wrong, they will be imprisoned and accused of deliberately helping the PKK as part of Ergenekon’s nefarious aims. In the Turkish navy, the situation has now reached farcical proportions. There is only one full admiral who is still at liberty, and he is due to retire in August. Apart from anything else, the judicial campaign against the military has made a mockery of Erdoğan’s ambitions of establishing Turkey as a regional superpower.
CONCLUSIONS: The hope had been that, once it was freed from the restrictions imposed by the military, the Turkish political system would develop into a fully-fledged democracy characterized by the separation of powers and institutionalized checks and balances. In practice, the result has been the exchange of one form or authoritarianism for another and the increasing concentration of power in Erdoğan’s hands.
In the absence of any system of checks and balances or an effective parliamentary opposition, the only remaining restraint on Erdoğan’s monopolization of power currently appears to lie in the Gülen Movement. Given their recent track record, reining in the Gülenists could be seen as a welcome development. But it would also consolidate Erdoğan’s already alarming monopolization of power. Sadly, for the moment at least, the preferred third option – a pluralistic democracy based on the rule of law – appears only a hypothetical possibility.
Gareth H. Jenkins is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center.
Turkey and Tehran: A Cold Peace
by Richard Weitz (02/13/2013 issue of the Turkey Analyst)
Turkey and Iran continue to resist the strong trends driving them to renew their Cold War of previous decades. Thus far, Turkey and Iran have been able to cooperate on some issues even while they conflict on others. Though they engage in a proxy war in Syria and fight over NATO’s missile defense policies, Turkey and Iran have developed perhaps their closest economic ties in modern history, with Western sanctions squeezing out competitors and allowing Turkey to finally achieve a trade surplus when dealing with Iran after years of massive deficits.
BACKGROUND: The renewed Turkish-Iranian tensions of recent years mark a regression to the historic pattern for their relationship. Clashes between the imperial ambitions of the Turkish-centered Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Persian dynasties shaped regional politics for centuries. Relations between Turkey and Iran were strained even during the 1990s, when both governments suspected the other of promoting terrorist and separatist movements against them. It has only been in the last decade that Turkey, under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), has significantly improved its relations with the Iranian government.
At first, the presence of overtly Islamic parties in charge of both Ankara and Tehran encouraged Turkish-Iranian reconciliation, but more recently it has become a source of division. Turkey’s secular political parties and national security establishment, which dominated Turkey’s foreign policy until a decade ago, generally perceived Iran, as well as Syria as potential threats, and sought to develop security ties with Israel. But the Islamic orientation of the AKP has meant that the current generation of Turkish and Iranian leaders now shares a common devotion to Islam and animus towards Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
But soon this religious element became a source of division as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began to displace President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other prominent Iranians as the most popular Muslim leader among the Arab masses due to the AKP’s public attacks on Israel and their support for various pro-Palestinian initiatives such as the controversial “freedom flotillas” seeking to defy Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Erdoğan has recommended that the new regimes in the Arab world follow Turkey’s model, whereas Iranian government representatives have told them to establish an Islamic Republic, as in Iran. During the past year, Turkish leaders have backed Sunni opponents of Iranian supported (as in Iraq and Syria) and Sunni governments facing mass Shiite opposition (as in Bahrain), while Tehran has adopted an opposite position.
The same pattern occurred with respect to regional security issues. In addition to renouncing security ties with Israel, the AKP pleased Iran by seeking to reconcile with its Syrian ally. The AKP launched a range of cooperative initiatives with President Bashar al-Assad. In the process, the new leaders in Turkey managed to dampen Syrian support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a policy that Tehran soon followed. A few years ago, Turkish and Iranian authorities began exchanging counterterrorist intelligence and coordinating military strikes against Kurdish terrorists in northern Iraq.
But since the AKP government decided to throw its support behind the Sunni rebels in Syria, Iranian support for the PKK has resumed. Iranian leaders have complained about Turkey’s becoming the main regional backer of the armed opposition seeking to overthrow al-Assad. A more recent dispute has been Turkey’s successful appeal in November 2012 that NATO deploy Patriot air defense systems on Turkish soil to defend Turkish territory against Syrian air and missile strikes. Iranian analysts fear the Patriots could serve as the basis of a no-fly zone that would deprive the al-Assad regime of one of its few advantages over the insurgents. Iranian president Ahmadinejad canceled a planned visit to Turkey, a step the Iranian media said attributed to the Patriot deployments.
Iraq has also become a major source of bilateral tensions. Turkey does not want Iran to dominate Iraq. The Turkish fear is that Iran seeks a weak and divided Iraq that is unable to contest Tehran’s drive for regional primacy. Turkey also perceives Iran as wanting a subservient Shiite regime to rule Baghdad that would not resist Iranian political and economic control over Iraq. In contrast, Turkey favors a strong Iraqi state ruled by a coalition of political forces that can maintain domestic stability as well as contribute to regional security. These conditions would be favorable for reviving Iraq’s hydrocarbon production, which would benefit Turkey as a key transit state for Iraqi oil and gas, and restoring Iraqi economic growth, which would support Turkish investors and traders. These different strategic visions have led Turkey and Iran to back opposing political forces in Iraq.
IMPLICATIONS: Even the nuclear issue has lost its ability to sustain good Turkey-Iran ties. Ankara gained some credit in Tehran in 2010, when it sought to galvanize a confidence-building agreement between Iran and the West over its nuclear file. When Western governments rejected that deal, the Turkish delegation to the UN Security Council voted against imposing additional sanctions on Iran. Although Iranian leaders appreciated Turkey’s support and the harder line that the AKP government adopted toward the Palestine question, they subsequently accused Turkey of colluding with Israel against Iran after Ankara announced in September 2011 that it would allow NATO to establish an early warning radar in southeast Turkey whose obvious, if unstated, purpose is to track Iranian missiles.
Turks now express irritation at Iranian ingratitude for their efforts to mediate between Tehran and the West. Iranian carping often includes threats as well as criticisms. Erdoğan has since stopped accepting at face value Iranian pledges never to develop nuclear weapons, insisting that Turkey would feel compelled to seek nuclear weapons too if Iran ever acquired them. Iran recently proposed Kazakhstan and other countries as suitable hosts for holding future Iranian nuclear negotiations, excluding Turkey, whose government has now adopted a significantly lower-key approach to the Iranian nuclear issue.
Turkish leaders nonetheless still oppose the international sanctions on Iran due to the economic costs on their own country as well as the Iranian people. Following a 1996 deal, Turkey imports about 30 million cubic meters of Iranian natural gas per day (10 billion cubic meters annually) from Iran through a direct pipeline. Turkey also buys 200,000 barrels of oil each day. These flows – equivalent to 20 percent of Turkey’s gas imports and 30 percent of its oil imports – help balance Turkey’s energy dependence on Russia, which provides Turkey with most of its oil and is building its first nuclear power plant. On the strength of these economic ties, Turkey-Iran trade now exceeds $20 billion.
Turkish policy makers have felt obliged to accept the mandatory sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, but they have resisted applying the supplementary sanctions adopted by Western governments, which include not purchasing Iranian energy or selling Iran precious metals. U.S. and European officials have generally not pressed Ankara on this issue, but fearful Turkish businesses have been cutting their ties with Iran in any case rather than risk losing accessing to global Western-dominated economic and financial systems. Plans to develop massive energy pipelines connecting the Caspian Basin to Europe through Turkish territory are much harder to realize without Tehran’s participation or even consent. The Iranian authorities have suspended visa-free travel with Turkey, contributing to a sharp fall in the number of Iranians tourists in Turkey, which as of 2011 had approached two million. Turkish purchases of Iranian oil have declined while Turkish financial institutions have become more reluctant to serve as intermediaries for third parties seeking to trade with Iran.
Nonetheless, the Westerns sanctions have ironically been providing important benefits to the Turkish economy. Turkish businesses still face numerous obstacles to doing business in Iran, ranging from Iranian-made red tape to the international sanctions. But the sanctions have excluded many Western competitors that Turkish firms still must compete against in other markets, including the Middle East. Most importantly, Turkey cannot pay for Iranian energy imports in dollars or Euros, so Iranian corporations have had to accept Turkish Lira and then use that currency to buy gold in Turkey, which can be sold in Gulf markets for a more convertible currency. This new practice has recently helped even the trade balance after years of large Turkish deficits.
For their part, Iranian leaders have resisted breaking entirely with Turkey. They already have enough potential adversaries, so having a powerful neighbor that opposes using force against Iran is still a great advantage. Iranian authorities appealed to Turkey to use its contacts with the Syrian opposition to help secure the release of 48 Iranian hostages. The two countries are establishing a joint university, a joint economic commission, and more transit and border terminals. Turkey and Iran have not fought a war since the 17th century, and the popular mood in both counties is against another bilateral armed conflict. In public, influential Iranians have been attributing some of their tensions with Turkey to Western machinations and “Zionist plots”. And many Iranians still hope that Turkey will refrain from biting the bullet and actually sending its own military forces into Syria. Without them, the al-Assad regime might be able to survive for years in a stalemated civil war.
CONCLUSIONS: Even beyond economic ties, Turkey fears that isolating and threatening Iran could further radicalize Iranian foreign policy. An alienated Iranian government might deepen its ties with terrorist organizations, intervene more deeply in Iraq and Afghanistan, and take other actions designed to retaliate against the United States and its allies, like Turkey. And a war between Iran and the West would – in this perspective -- prove disastrous since Turkey’s regional interests would severely suffer, as they did during the confrontation between the United States and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The losses from a war involving Iran would be even greater.
Nonetheless, the Turkish-Iranian relationship is primed for problems due to differing geopolitical and sectarian interests. Turkey and Iran have already resumed their historic pattern of eschewing direct wars by fighting one another by proxy. After decades in which one or the other power was clearly dominant, we now have a dangerous equipoise in which both these non-Arab regimes consider themselves rising powers that deserve preeminent say in the Middle East. But by definition, at most only one of them can exercise that primacy.
Richard Weitz is Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Political-Military Analysis, Hudson Institute.
What the Columnists Say
(02/13/2013 issue of the Turkey Analyst)
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Analysis Niklas Swanström and Leah Oppenheimer, "Invisible Ink: Looking for the Lost Trade between China, Russia, and Central Asia", ISDP Policy Brief, 13 March 2013. 
New Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr with Adib Farhadi, Finish the Job: Jump-Start the Afghan Economy, December 2012.
Conference Report Cheryl Benard, Eli Sugarman, and Holly Rehm, Cultural Heritage vs. Mining on the New Silk Road? Finding Technical Solutions for Mes Aynak and Beyond (in cooperation with the Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage) December 2012.
Article Svante E. Cornell, "The 'Afghanization of the North Caucasus: Causes and Implications of a Changing Conflict", in Stephen Blank, ed., Russia's Homegrown Insurgency: Jihad in the North Caucasus, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2012.