Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi flew to Turkey on Wednesday for key meetings with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both countries oppose Israel’s war in Gaza and support Hamas, but their support is not identical.
Iran recently carried out missile attacks on northern Iraq and Pakistan, killing civilians, and has pushed its proxies to attack Israel and the US. By contrast, Turkey is more complex in how it backs Hamas; it has also recently carried out a bombing campaign in Syria, targeting the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Iran’s official line is that Raisi’s visit is about economic and commercial issues, while the Palestinian issue is only a close second. According to Iranian pro-government media, Raisi said that “Turkey, as a neighboring and Muslim country, is an important economic and commercial partner” for Iran.
Iran expects to sign several deals with Turkey but has also said that the Muslim world is concerned about the war in Gaza. “Iran and Turkey have a common position in supporting Palestine and the resistance of the oppressed and powerful Palestinian people,” Iran’s Fars News reported.
Iran, Turkey cooperating against US-backed SDF in Syria
Iran is convinced that Hamas will prevail, saying it wants to “cut off the vital arteries of the Zionist regime. Therefore,” Iran says, “the issue of Palestine will be one of the issues discussed between us and the president of Turkey,” implying that Iran wants to discuss trade between Turkey and Israel.
Overall, the agenda is also one in which Iran and Turkey seek to work together outside the orbit of the West. While the US praised Turkey for finally backing Sweden’s bid to join NATO, Ankara has increasingly been at odds with the West. Ankara’s foreign policy in the region often supports extremist groups and has sought to destabilize eastern Syria.
In eastern Syria, the US backs the SDF, which has suffered bombs by Iranian-backed militias, meaning, in essence, that Turkey and Iran cooperate against the US.
Turkey also operates in northern Iraq and Iran and recently carried out attacks on Erbil. However, in Iraq, the countries do not always agree. Turkey and the Kurdish KDP party in Erbil have good relations, while Iran has better relations with the Kurdish PUK party; Iran even murdered a key Kurdish businessman in Erbil along with his family.
Overall, Iran is seeking to shift its policies toward China, looking to work with Turkey on other organizations, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, which Iran has joined.
How does Turkey see the coming meetings? The country’s Daily Sabah paper, which is pro-government, wrote that “the turmoil engulfing the Middle East since Israel went to war on Oct. 7 has added a new layer of complexity to Turkey’s close but uneasy relationship with Iran. Erdogan considers Iran-backed Hamas as legitimately elected liberators and not the “terrorist” organization it has been proscribed as across the Western world.”
The paper noted that Turkey’s leader has “compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler for attacks that have killed more than 25,000 people – mostly women and children – in Gaza. Relentless Israeli attacks have also left much of the besieged Palestinian territory in ruins and starved of food.” In this sense, Ankara’s anti-Israel views are as strong as Iran’s today.
