Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has on Wednesday commenced a crucial visit to Iran to pursue a crowded agenda that includes revival of nuclear talks between Tehran and the global powers as well as ways to align perceptions of the two countries in their regional backyard.
Ahead of the visit, a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said that Mr. Davutoglu and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, would discuss the nuclear standoff between Iran and the West, the unrest in Syria as well as developments in Iraq.
Turkey and Iran share their borders with Iraq, while Syria, Iran’s key ally, which has recently fallen out with Ankara, is Turkey’s next door neighbour. Turkey is heavily dependent on Iranian oil, and is therefore uncomfortable with the new U.S. law, which can target foreign companies routing their payments for oil imports from Iran through the Iranian Central Bank.
The Turkish Foreign Minister is visiting Iran exactly a year after the six global powers and Iran failed to achieve a breakthrough during their nuclear talks that Turkey had hosted in Istanbul.
But days ahead of Mr. Davutoglu’s visit, Iran disclosed that it was awaiting the response to its proposal of holding another round of talks with the global powers, represented by the European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Analysts point out that prospects of talks have brightened after Iran held naval drills — a show of military power near the Strait of Hormuz, the international channel for oil supplies.
On its part, the U.S. has threatened to throttle Iran’s oil exports — a move that seeks to convey to its domestic audience, that if it does begins talks with Tehran, it would do so from a position of strength.
While Iran had on the previous occasion openly welcomed Turkey’s mediation on the nuclear issue, it might not sound as enthusiastic in endorsing the use of Ankara’s good offices as it did in the past. New irritants have recently developed between the two countries — each with
significant regional ambitions — that have been clouding their one-time rosy relationship.
Ahead of Mr. Davutoglu’s visit, Iran’s state-run Press TV criticised Turkey’s decision to host a NATO missile system on its soil. “Turkey claims that NATO's missile system aims to strengthen
the alliance's ‘defence capacity and strengthen [Turkey's] national defence system,’ and would not target any specific country. However, Washington has clearly implied on numerous occasions that Iran is the primary target of its so-called missile shield deployment in Europe,” Press TV said.
The two countries are also set to address their differences on Iran’s key ally Iraq, where sectarian divisions appear to be gaining ground after the exit of American forces from the country. The Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman is pointing out that Ankara has “heavily backed” Sunni leader and Vice-President, Tariq al-Hashemi, who is facing terrorism charges after he apparently fell out with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, known to be well disposed towards Iran.
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring the wave of pro-democracy uprisings that are positioning Islamists into power in the region, Turkey and Iran are deeply divided on the continuation in power of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s secular pro-Iran leader who is facing a Turkey-backed uprising that is raging in the country’s Islamist strongholds of Homs and Hama.
