The following excerpt is from a report published by the U.S. Institute of Peace written by Sean Kane, a program officer working with USIP’s Iraq Program:
The center of attention in the Middle East has over the past decade swung from Egypt and Saudi Arabia eastward toward Iran and Turkey.
The willful decision of the Arab countries to stay out of Iraq after 2003 is both a symptom of and a contributor to this broader regional shift. Especially when contrasted with the stagnant autocracies of the Gulf and North Africa, Turkey conveys a sense of soft-power economic dynamism and Iran a narrative of hard-power resistance to the “imperialist” international order.
Each in its own way has appeal to the disillusioned publics that rose up in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere in early 2011. It remains to be seen how the Arab Spring will affect what was the emerging Turko-Persian dynamic in the Middle East, but in any scenario Turkey and Iran will likely continue to stand out as descendants of historical empires rather than as invented nation-states, their contrasting efforts to blend Islam and politics, and their respectively independent or outrightly hostile stands toward U.S. foreign policy.
In the midst of upheaval in the region, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman policy of zero problems with its neighbors and increasing ties with Iran based on economic, energy, and regional interests is of some concern in the United States. However, despite the commonality of interests between Ankara and Tehran on bilateral issues, the scheduled U.S. military departure from Iraq will likely bring them increasingly into direct competition in the old Ottoman-Persian battlefield of Mesopotamia.
The stakes both countries perceive for their ambitions of how the vacuum in Iraq is filled are too difficult to be reconciled.
Ankara looks for an inclusive and relatively secular Iraq in which no single group dominates and its mostly Sunni allies preferably play a genuine role. Turkey positively regards a strong Iraq as bolstering its own security and is privately concerned about what will follow the U.S. troop departure.
Tehran prefers a weak neighbor with explicitly Shiite-led governments incapable of proving a political, economic, or conventional military rival. It also perceives any continued U.S. military presence in Iraq after 2011 as inherently threatening.
It is equally important to look at this growing competition from the Iraqi perspective. The immediate conclusion is that Iraqis, given their continuing deep internal divisions, are unable to develop a consensus foreign policy based on national interests.
Despite a strong sense of Iraqi nationalism, Iraqi politics cannot in their current fractured environment be separated from the regional confrontation between Sunni Arab states defending the status quo and the Iranian-led resistance axis. In this battle, the interventions of Iran and Saudi Arabia in Iraq are the most polarizing and are considered by Iraqis as having directly contributed to suicide bombings, sectarian militias, and the post-2003 descent into civil strife.
Turkey, to some extent removed from the Arab-Persian divide and enjoying good relations with both camps, has the potential to find a more positive reception. Moreover, unlike oil producers Saudi Arabia and Iran, Turkey has active reasons to wish for the success of Iraq’s strategy to use a massive hydrocarbon expansion to rebuild at home and gain clout abroad. While Saudi Arabia and Iran tend to look askance at possible increases in Iraqi oil and gas exports as potential competition, Turkey views boosted Iraqi output as an opportunity to further its strategic goal of becoming the conduit for energy from the Middle East to Europe.
This is not to say that Iraq does not need or desire healthy relations with all of its neighbors but that at the moment, Turkish and Iraqi interests are aligned most closely.
Of all countries, Turkey should also understand the importance to Iraq of finding a balance among secularism, Islam, and democracy while developing an independent foreign policy not categorized by past paradigms. Turkish interventions in Iraq, however, have not always hewed to these precepts.
Ankara publicly calls for increased reconciliation in Iraq and a robust and inclusive political process in which no group dominates, but Turkish intentions and Iraqi perceptions do not always coincide. Turkish involvement in helping midwife the mostly Sunni Iraqiyya electoral coalition and openly backing prime ministerial candidates risk its becoming lumped with the Arab states’ agenda in Iraq. Its growing role in the old Ottoman vilayet of Mosul is also arousing Iraqi concerns about territorial integrity.
Turkey’s core advantage in Iraq is its economic strength and ability to transcend the sectarian divide in the region. To overcome these concerns, Ankara would now be well served to replicate the model of its growing political outreach and economic links with the KRG with Shiite-led governments in Baghdad and to consider how to prevent key areas on which Turkish and Iraqi interests diverge, such as regional water sharing, from setting the tone for the bilateral relationship.
How Should the United States React?
The United States has direct interests in who fills the postwithdrawal vacuum in Iraq.
Looking forward, an Iraq that remains weak and divided will continue to be a regional power vacuum largely filled by Iran, a prize contested between Arabs and Persians, and a possible source of regional instability in terms of external spillover from internal conflicts.
In contrast, a stable and strong Iraq able to address thorny questions of its national identity, develop positive relations with its neighbors, and agree on a foreign policy based on a uniquely Iraqi identity rather than Arab nationalism or Shiite solidarity could become a net contributor to regional stability.
It would also naturally be a limiting factor on Iranian influence in the region, and likely bolster Turkish efforts to establish itself as the regional hub.
Given this, U.S. policymakers have looked positively at increased Turkish influence in Iraq as a counterbalance to Iranian preeminence there. Such a limited conceptualization could undermine Turkey’s core competitive advantage by steering it toward a counterproductive sectarian approach in Iraq.
A more productive understanding identifies Turkey as the regional power with the greatest alignment of interests in the emergence of the strong, stable, and self-sufficient country that Iraqis want and the Obama administration has articulated as its goal.
This complementarity of Turkish and American interests on Iraq extends to the regional level. A strong and stable Iraq is a possible pivot for Turkey’s and Iran’s wider regional ambitions, enabling Ankara and hindering Tehran. Washington may well have its differences with Turkey’s new foreign policy and will no doubt clash with Baghdad on some of its regional choices as well. This aside, Turkey’s blend of Islam, democracy, and soft power is a more attractive regional template than Iran’s formula of Islamic theocracy and hard power.
The United States should therefore continue to welcome increased Turkish-Iraqi economic, trade, and energy ties and where possible encourage their further development as a key part of its post-2011 strategy for Iraq and the region.
This could be achieved by creatively continuing security cooperation among Iraq, the United States, and Turkey on combating the PKK, nudging Ankara and Baghdad to make progress on potential wedge issues such as regional water sharing, and providing discreet feedback to Ankara when Shiites and other Iraqis are aroused by overly energetic Turkish political activity in their country.