In a move that was not announced in advance, the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu visited on the fourth of this month, the Iranian capital Tehran and he has met during his visit with a number of officials in the Iranian regime, headed by President of the Republic Hassan Rowhani. This visit is the first of its kind for Ahmet Davutoglu since assuming the presidency of the Turkish government in the twenty first of August 2014 .
The visit comes at a time when the Turkish-Iranian relations is witnessing a clash in many regional issues, which extends from the Middle East “Iraq, Syria, Yemen” to the Caucasus countries. However this clash did not prevent to pay the visit, noting that the two countries , “Iran and Turkey,” emerging middle powers in the international system, are proceeded from a political realism in the conduct of and understand their relations and mutual interests, and in keeping with this understanding , the visit of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Tehran was made.
This unannounced visit , and in these confused regional environment, has its dimensions, and the first ones of these dimensions is : the security dimension which is directly linked to the repercussions of the Syrian crisis and its negative effects on both Iran and Turkey alike. Prior to start the truce in the twenty-seventh in the last February , between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the armed opposition, the US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that in the absence of the cessation of hostilities in Syria, it is difficult to prevent the division of Syria, and far-going days of the truce , Vice Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said Moscow hopes that the participants in the Syrian negotiations to come to the idea of establishing a federal republic, and considered that the Syrians must put specific criteria for political restructuring in Syria , the future , that it depends on maintaining the territorial integrity of the country, including the possibility of establishing a federal republic .
There is no doubt that these statements are raising the concern both Turkey and Iran, noting that the idea of the US ,division or the Russian Federal mean to the political decision-maker in Turkey about the probability of the existence of another Kurdish region in the future , a nearby to the Turkish border, similar to the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, and this is not accepted by the Turkish government, they are afraid that the matter will be pulled up on the Kurds in Turkey and encourage them to claim the autonomy at the very least- or break away to establish the State of North Kurdistan, especially if we know that of Kurds in Turkey, representing 15% of the people, and the Kurds are representing the majority in the 15 Turkish provinces out of 81.
This partition or federalism that if it has become a reality and recognized, their negative impacts will not be confined to Turkey alone, but also will be pulled up to the Republic of Iran, as an infection of the autonomy or secession from it might hit it , what encourage Kurds in Iran for this is the number of them in Iran which, according to the latest estimates, approximately 7% of the total of Iran’s population , nearly 66 million people , are Kurds, where their number are estimated by four million and six hundred and twenty thousand. Most Kurds live in Kurdistan province, and the province of Kermanshah and Ilam Province and Western Azerbaijan as these provinces are called according to Kurdish culture by eastern Kurdistan.
This visit comes in the context of an Iranian – Turkish joint coordination of their rejection positions to redraw the Middle East map by the new drawers of the region, the United States and the Russian Federation, this new drawing to the map of the region will not be easily implemented as happened a hundred years ago and during the First World War by Britain and France, as long as there are regional countries where their interests will be harmed in general, and Iran and Turkey in particular .it is worth noting that the current Regional and international circumstances are not similar entirely with that circumstances that prevailed after World War I which resulted to the disintegration of the countries such as the disintegration of Ottoman Empire , in order to get to the same regional and international conclusions.
The economic dimension is the second goal of the visit, as it is linked to the lifting of international sanctions last January for the Republic of Iran, and it is clearly evident from the ministers who accompanied Ahmed Davutoglu to Tehran , and they are: economy minister, Mustafa Alitah, and the minister of energy and Natural Resources, Pratt Olbarac, and the Minister of customs and trade, Bulent Tovnkja, and the Minister of development Cevdet Yilmaz, Minister of transport and communications and maritime navigation, Ben Ali Yildirim. The Turkish government, which sided with Iran during the economic sanctions and benefited greatly from trade with it , so Turkey wants to promote the economic cooperation with Iran at some stage after the lifting of international sanctions against it, especially in the aspect of trade exchange in the of Turkey’s import of Iranian power, both ” oil and gas, “and also as a conduit for Iranian energy to world markets. Turkey is seeking through this economic cooperation with Iran to reduce the damage to the Turkish economy due to the repercussions of the Arab Spring and the sanctions imposed by Russia on the back ground of Turkish drop of Russian fighter jet in November last year.
The third dimension of the visit is embodied in the diplomatic dimension, as the convergence in Iranian-Turkish relations will allow , despite a sharp contradiction in resolving the Syrian crisis, the practice of the government of justice and development for the role that was characterized by a mediating role in the solution of disputes between states , especially the current dispute between the Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Iran, Turkey is in a position to contribute to the convergence of views between the two countries, especially the Great powers like the United States of America and the major as Federal Russia are to invest this dispute in order to serve their interests, according to the colonial principle “divide and rule”, and not concerned to the interests of regional allies and many evidences for this , so the regional security for this part of the Middle East lies with these countries, “Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia,” to get to the security situation that the matter requires reaching a diplomatic settlement to end the conflict situation among them, , and perhaps the statement of Iranian President Hassan Rohani about the contacts and heading of an Iranian political delegation to visit Riyadh, is a step in the right direction. The question to be raised will these countries be remained a patch on the stones of the chess of great and major powers alike .
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies