Fearing an Independent Kurdistan, Erdogan Travels to Tehran

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Iran on Wednesday for meetings with the country’s supreme leader, president, and other regime officials. Erdogan’s visit follows the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) historic referendum for independence from Iraq, which Ankara and Tehran fiercely oppose. Tehran’s embrace of Erdogan illustrates how Iran uses mutually perceived threats to accelerate Turkey’s drift away from the West.

The Islamic Republic has never liked sharing a border with a NATO member. Although Iran and Turkey have been at loggerheads over most regional conflicts, the Middle East’s fluid dynamics have offered Iran multiple opportunities to exploit fissures between Turkey and the West. In particular, the botched military coup against Erdogan in July 2016 presented a key chance to demonstrate Tehran’s value to Erdogan as a partner, especially after Erdogan had chastised Tehran in May 2015 for attempting to “dominate the region.” As the coup played out and Washington waffled over what to do, Tehran swiftly cast its lot with Erdogan.

The Kurdish referendum of September 25 has prompted a flurry of high-level diplomatic activity between Tehran and Ankara. In August, the commander of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff paid a historic first visit to Ankara. A few weeks later, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, foreign ministers from Iran, Iraq, and Turkey met to calibrate their responses to the KRG vote. Finally, ahead of Erdogan’s visit, Ankara dispatched the Turkish military’s chief of staff to Tehran, where the general puzzlingly said that “Turkey and Iran have been two friendly countries with common values for centuries.”

The potential for Kurdish independence from Iraq is alarming to Iran and Turkey, who both have their own restive Kurdish populations who may welcome the opportunity for secession. Both Tehran and Ankara have long repressed their Kurdish populations, fearing for the territorial integrity of their states. As a result, Ankara and Tehran remain hypersensitive about separatism, and see the KRG referendum as a predicate to the dissolution of not only the state of Iraq but the region’s state-system.

Home to the largest Kurdish population in the world, Turkey would fear the KRG referendum with or without Tehran’s encouragement. But Ankara’s rhetoric increasingly resembles Tehran’s talking points, seeking to delegitimize the KRG through anti-Semitic attacks. In Tehran, Erdogan gleefully noted, “Other than Israel, no country has supported the Kurdistan region’s independence.”

Despite the recent rapprochement, a full Turko-Iranian alignment will not be easy. The mutually shared threat of Kurdish independence has, in the past, failed to unite Turkey and Iran. The two neighbors pursue opposing policies in the region and back different proxies, including Kurdish ones. Both states harbor deep suspicions about each other’s Kurdish ties and have long competed over influence within the KRG. Still, the KRG’s quest for independence presents a key opportunity for Tehran to further entice a drifting Ankara into its orbit. The recent series of military and diplomatic overtures are a testament to Iran’s steadfast intention to worsen the divide between Turkey and the West.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Merve Tahiroglu is a research analyst focusing on Turkey. Follow Merve on Twitter @MerveTahiroglu.