Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
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“Once friends, Turkey and Iran are finding that their reactions to the Arab Spring revolutions are driving them apart and renewing an old regional rivalry. One sign of the deepening divide was obvious from the attendee list for an international conference on Afghanistan security that opened today in Istanbul. Every primary player is here: 14 regional nations, with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan in attendance, as well as more than a dozen other countries, including the United States. But Iran had planned to send just its low-ranking deputy foreign minister, despite its long border with Afghanistan and claims of being a regional superpower. While Iran relented at the last minute and sent Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, the diplomatic tension indicates how the people-power uprisings have helped transform the Turkey-Iran friendship into an escalating rivalry. So far, analysts say, Turkey appears the winner in pushing for secular, democratic outcomes …………..”

It almost looks like that old rivalry that was fought on territory extending from the Caspian Sea to Mesopotamia. Eventually the Turks ended up with what is now Iraq as well as the rest of the Arab East (it was mainly Iraq they fought over and kept winning and losing to each other).
There is no doubt that the Arab uprisings have enhanced the Turkish role in the Middle East. The Arab uprisings have also sharpened the contrast between the Turkish model and the Iranian one. Many more Arabs now look toward Turkey, a NATO member, as an example. Perhaps it is the comparison between the elected Turkish leaders and their own thuggish Arab dictators and absolute tribal kings. It is also partly the contrast between Turkish leaders and the inarticulate Iranian clergy who come across as repressive (mainly because they are repressive). The Turks have also benefited from moving away from their “former” Israeli friends in recent months. Either way the Turks have benefited from the Arab uprisings, for now.
The Iranians are on the defensive mainly because their system of government is not nearly as free and democratic as the Turkish one. They have also suffered partly as a result of a furious Saudi sectarian media campaign that has continued since the Iraqi elections of 2005. The Saudi dynasty rules Arab airwaves, or most of them. That Saudi campaign has not only been aimed at the Iranian regime: more ominously it has also targeted Arab Shi’as and poisoned relationships within many societies on the Persian-American Gulf.
Cheers
mhg