After decades of managing tensions through careful balancing, Turkey and Iran now find themselves increasingly at odds following recent shifts in the regional balance of power. With Ankara emboldened and Tehran on its back foot after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the struggle for influence between the two neighbors and long-time rivals is escalating in both Syria and Iraq and could spread well beyond their borders.
The most recent flare-up was sparked by Iranian criticism of Turkey’s Syria policy following the call by jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan for his fighters to disarm. In response, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned Iran against meddling in others’ internal affairs, suggesting such actions could backfire. “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” said Fidan, in a rare, veiled threat directed against a country that has long feared Turkey could fan separatist tendencies among its large Turkic minority, which makes up more than 20% of the population.
Turkey has viewed Iran’s regional policies as destabilizing for years. When King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2015, the two leaders agreed to form a united Sunni front to counter what they saw as Tehran’s sectarian policies. But for Ankara, the agreement remained merely rhetoric, with no follow-through. Turkey’s dependence on Iran for its energy needs, Tehran’s outsized influence in the post-uprising Syria, and Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s growing skepticism of Turkey’s regional policies made Ankara unwilling to commit to the Saudi-led Sunni front. Today, things are radically different.
Israel’s military campaign following the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, significantly weakened Iran and its proxies. The toppling of the Assad regime by a group friendly to Ankara dealt a further blow to Tehran’s regional influence. It also comes at a time when Turkey is growing less energy dependent on its eastern neighbor. Since Washington ramped up sanctions against Tehran following President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Ankara has taken steps to diversify its energy suppliers.
In this new regional context, Turkey thinks it has the upper hand in relations, a shift it aims to exploit to achieve its foreign policy goals. In Syria, Ankara wants to see a stable country that will allow it to cultivate closer economic, political, and defense ties. Syria also occupies a unique place in Erdoğan’s efforts to disarm the PKK, and Turkish officials hope post-Assad dynamics will enable them to turn the page in ties with Washington. Turkey wants to capitalize on a weakened Iran to further its energy, trade, and connectivity goals in Iraq. Ankara has already taken steps to cultivate closer ties with Baghdad, and it hopes the coming US troop withdrawal from Iraq will further strengthen its hand there.
Iran’s response
Turkey’s perception of a weakened Iran is exactly what Tehran is determined to dispel. In a show of frustration, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top foreign policy advisor, Ali Akbar Velayati, publicly rebuked Fidan. Velayati’s intervention was more than just rhetoric — it signaled Tehran’s readiness to confront Ankara and was soon reinforced by a coordinated media campaign outlining potential ways Iran could pressure Turkey.
One of those ways is to stir up trouble inside Turkey. Iranian state-affiliated media have issued explicit warnings that any Turkish attempt to destabilize Iran by supporting anti-Tehran elements among the country’s large Turkic minority will be met with in-kind retaliation. Such a move could significantly raise the stakes for Ankara given its own internal vulnerabilities to unrest among minority groups.
For months, even before the fall of Assad, a growing number of analysts in Tehran have been warning about Ankara’s nostalgia for its imperial Ottoman past. Now, Iranians officials are openly echoing such fears and are on the offensive, accusing Turkey of having a history of meddling in Iran’s ethnic affairs. This includes alleged backing for separatist cells in Iran’s Azerbaijani-populated provinces as well as funding for a new Persian-language media operation.
Tehran regards this as an attempt by Ankara to expand its soft-power reach inside Iran as Turkey has ramped up such efforts across the broader Middle East. Iranian sources close to the Revolutionary Guards have even claimed that Turkish intelligence is plotting to deploy anti-Iran Sunni extremist militants to target Iranian interests, although there have been no signs of any significant moves on this front as yet.
Elsewhere, Iranian perspectives on Turkey’s strategy suggest that while Ankara may not seek direct conflict with Tehran, it would readily benefit from Iran’s weakening at the hands of Israel or the United States. Such a scenario, in their view, would clear the path for Turkey to assert greater regional influence at Iran’s expense.
Tehran’s calculated messaging campaign aims to suggest that it has leverage over Ankara, highlighting Turkey’s own fragile minority dynamics and Iran’s potential to stir up unrest among them — particularly Turkish Alevis, who make up 10-20% of the population, and Kurds, who make up 15-20%. Regardless of Tehran’s actual capacity to incite minorities inside Turkey, this rhetoric underscores Iran’s intent to demonstrate that it can strike back if Ankara presses further.
At loggerheads in Syria and Iraq
Another card at Iran’s disposal is Syria, where Tehran can still take actions that could spoil Ankara’s plans, such as by fomenting opposition to the new interim government or supporting Syrian Kurds, complicating negotiations with Damascus. Iran’s position in post-Assad Syria has significantly eroded and its next steps remain uncertain. Iranian officials send mixed signals about whether Tehran intends to reassert itself in Syria.
While some senior Revolutionary Guards commanders have denounced the former Assadist regime as corrupt and unworthy of Iranian backing, Khamenei has taken the opposite stance, justifying Tehran’s past support. He has even suggested that Syria’s transitional government is merely temporary, urging Syrian youth to “reclaim” their country — perhaps hinting at Iran’s long-term ambitions to regain its foothold. For Ankara, such Iranian signaling is a direct challenge to Turkish ambitions for post-Assad Syria.
Ankara seems to be aware of the things Tehran can do to hinder its aims. Turkish officials have not directly blamed Tehran but hinted that the recent clashes that killed scores of Alawites in Syria were a “sectarian attack” against Turkey’s policies, a veiled suggestion that Tehran was behind the chaos. Tehran’s potential cooperation with Syrian Kurds risks complicating the talks the Turkish government has launched with the PKK’s Öcalan. In Ankara’s view, were Syria to descend into chaos, the US might decide to keep its troops in the country and maintain its partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey views the SDF as a terrorist group due to its links to the PKK, and it has long been a major point of contention in relations between Washington and Ankara. Were the US to remain in Syria, it would likely complicate Erdoğan’s plans to cultivate close ties with President Trump.
Iran can make life difficult for Ankara in Iraq as well. Turkey wants to cultivate closer trade and energy links and hopes that the Development Road project, a highway and railway corridor stretching from Basra to the Turkish port of Mersin, will bring Iraq further into its orbit. For this to work, Iraq needs to get its political house in order first. Turkish-Iranian tensions, however, pose a big risk to those efforts.
Iran still wields strong political influence in Baghdad, while Turkey has become Iraq’s dominant economic partner. Turkey and the United States are pushing Baghdad to take steps to roll back Iranian influence, but giving up on Iraq at a time when its regional influence is at its weakest is not easy for Tehran. All these dynamics leave Iraq vulnerable to the increasing rivalry between Ankara and Tehran.
War or something else?
Iranian officials think there is still an opportunity to de-escalate with Turkey and prevent a full-blown rupture in relations. They largely see Turkey’s recent posture as an effort to dissuade Tehran from supporting Syrian Kurds, a group that Ankara views as a direct threat to its regional ambitions.
Given the recent shifts in regional dynamics and the return of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, Tehran has no option but to engage in a careful balancing act. While Tehran feels compelled to push back against Ankara, it really has no option but to prioritize its conflict with the US and Israel while pursuing what it claims is a genuine effort to de-escalate across the region with neighboring states.
Still, Turkish officials’ more vocal criticism of Iranian actions points to the new mood in Ankara: Turkey is in a stronger place regionally and globally. Ankara does not want conflict with Tehran but seems not to mind one if Tehran pushes for it. The reality is, however, despite Iran’s weakened hand, Tehran still has cards to play against Ankara. Given the high stakes, it is best for Turkey to take steps to cool down tensions.
Iran and Turkey won’t go to war, but their regional competition — most intense during the Syrian civil war — could rapidly escalate and spread to new fronts. There are already signs that their contest for influence in the South Caucasus is spilling over into Central Asia and even Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The same could happen in the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and among the Gulf states, where Arab leaders are carefully managing their interests against both Tehran and Ankara.
In short, for now, the worst-case scenario is an escalation of Iran-Turkey proxy competition on a larger scale. That would represent a dangerous return to the zero-sum rivalry that gripped the region after the Arab Spring — a chapter most regional powers had hoped they had put behind them.
Gönül Tol is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of Erdoğan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria.
Alex Vatanka is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute. His most recent book is The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy, and Political Rivalry Since 1979.
Photo by ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images
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