How likely is Iranian-Turkish military confrontation?
Mikhail Shereshevskiy's scenario

ANALYTICS  10 November 2022 - 15:23

At first glance, such a formulation of the issue looks strange today. There is tension between the two countries, but at the same time, they have extensive common interests. Nevertheless, such a scenario deserves attention.

There are serious tensions between Türkiye and Iran. In Syria, Türkiye supports Sunni armed opposition and deploys troops in the north and northwest, while Iranians support the Assad regime, send Shiite militias from across the Middle East and even maintain a limited military presence there. In Northern Iraq, Turkish forces are fighting against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and expanding their network of military bases, while the Iranians, who claim dominance in the area and in Iraq in general, occasionally use local Shiite militias from the Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF) to launch rocket attacks on Turkish bases. Finally, Azerbaijan, which is allied to Türkiye, seeks to pave the Zangazur corridor to connect its core territory with Nakhchivan, and the Iranians not only object to this but also systematically conduct large-scale military maneuvers in the border regions with Armenia and Azerbaijan, showing that they are ready to intervene.

However, on the other hand, Türkiye and Iran have a lot in common. Türkiye always hedges its bets. As a member of the NATO bloc and a military ally of the US, it is developing economic partnerships with Russia and Iran in parallel. For example, Ankara buys gas from neighbouring Iran. This is important in the context of rising energy prices, as these increases accelerate inflation. The latter is extremely disadvantageous to Erdogan in light of the elections to be held in Türkiye in 2023. Türkiye seeks to strengthen trade with Iran and also demonstrate its independence from the US.

For its part, the Iranian regime, which is struggling to survive heavy US sanctions, needs a reciprocal trade that provides it with currency and certain types of goods. And besides, both countries realise that a major armed conflict between them entails great risks and is therefore highly undesirable.

All together help Ankara and Tehran maintain a balance, avoiding a direct military confrontation. So what has changed and why might the countries suddenly be on the brink of war?

The internal situation in Iran has changed. Since mid-September, there has been a widespread popular uprising involving most ethnic groups and classes of Iranian society. In the beginning, it seemed that the regime would quickly crush the resistance. Iran has been shaken since 2017, but each time the police and Basij (paramilitary forces linked to the country's leading political and economic force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC) have crushed the protests due to the dire economic situation and the Islamic Republic's system becoming less and less popular in the eyes of an increasingly secular society. But this time something has gone wrong, the protests have not subsided.

Iran increasingly resembles a pot boiling over from the edges. Protests and riots are everywhere, but the most serious are on the periphery. Iran is an empire where the linguistic rights of a number of peoples (Azeris, Kurds, Balochs) are infringed and where the official religion, Shiite Islam, dominates while others are oppressed; there are many Sunnis in the provinces and their numbers are growing at the expense of higher birth rates. In addition, the government pumps money from the ethnic periphery to Tehran and Fars Province, and this leads to increased poverty in the regions, which also does not add to their sympathy for the central government. Finally, in the ethnic regions, the police and Basij act more violently and kill protesters en masse (they also kill in the centre, but somewhat less), and the killings are causing increasing rage.

The situation in Iran as a whole is beginning to resemble that of Syria's Soura, an uprising that began in 2011. Bashar al-Assad's government has managed to retain control of the capital, but the province has been engulfed by a wave of violence. The regime's forces, primarily loyalist militias (shabiha), similar to Iran's Basij and other groups, were not too soft and used weapons widely against the protesters. The protesters began to respond with violence to violence. Some police officers and the military began to defect to their side. This increased the violence of the loyalists and eventually the country descended into a full-scale civil war.

Again, what does this have to do with Türkiye and its relationship with Iran? It does. The largest ethnic minority in Iran are Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanis. They comprise 30 to 40 million out of the 84 million population of the country. And they reside compactly in several provinces. These are the provinces of northwestern Iran (Ardabil, East Azerbaijan, and West Azerbaijan) - South Azerbaijan. It also includes the province of Zanjan, which has a predominantly Azerbaijani population.

Protests in these regions are already underway, but they have not yet reached the scale of those in Sistan and Balochistan, and Kurdistan. It is very probable that this will happen. In that case, the blood will flood the streets.

It is not clear to me whether the Turkish government is able and willing to stay away from interfering in those events. Let me remind you that Türkiye actively intervened in the civil war in Syria, even brought in the troops, and engaged in armed clashes with the Assad regime. This happened for various reasons, including because Türkiye did not like the bloodshed on its borders, the persecution of Syrian Turkmen, and the waves of refugees that came to its territory from Syria.

But the situation in Iran could get even tougher at any moment. That country borders Türkiye. And how can the Turkish government ignore the massacres of the Turkic-speaking population? If it shows restraint, the Turkish opposition will criticise Erdogan - and Türkiye is due to hold elections as early as the summer of 2023.

We are only discussing the scenario here. The Iranian regime, in theory, is still capable of suppressing the uprising. Iranian Azerbaijan may, for whatever reason, limit itself to isolated protests, which will not cause Tehran's reaction in the form of mass bloodshed. And Türkiye may show restraint.

But the situation is teetering on the brink so that a scenario of full-scale Iranian-Turkish conflict becomes a discussed future possibility.

Caliber.Az