Iran shakes Syria’s faith in Turkey, report says

A report prepared by the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM), an Ankara-based think tank established in 2009, has claimed that Iran has been influential in disrupting Syria’s confidence in Turkey by disseminating anti-Turkish propaganda, saying Turkey is supposedly favoring the United States over Syria and providing arms to opposition groups that are trying to topple the Assad regime.

The ORSAM report, prepared by Middle East experts Veysel Ayhan, Oytun Orhan and Sercan Doğan, highlighted that instability in the region benefits Iran, which regards the developments in Syria as a threat to its own regime and tries to undo Turkey’s influence over Bashar al-Assad to steer the developments in a way that befits Iran’s own agenda.

“There is an undeniable Iran-Turkey rivalry over Syria, a rivalry that has existed in the region for a while, but below the surface,” explained Orhan to Today’s Zaman earlier this week. “Iran knew that its own regime would come under fire if the regime in Syria is to be toppled, changing the conditions currently in favor of Iran on the basis of Shiite domination,” the expert added.

Orhan ruled out the possibility of a Turkey-based arms dispatch to opposition forces by saying that such a move would be a violation of Turkish foreign policy, which has persistently been aimed at “luring the Syrian administration away from Iran, bringing it closer to Turkey.” But the balance was disrupted when the uprising in Syria began.

As the expert blamed Syria for relying on Iran’s support rather than implementing reforms, he regarded the dissemination of anti-Turkish propaganda from Iranian media outlets a development “that cannot be a coincidence.”

ORSAM’s Doğan spoke in agreement with Orhan on his suggestion that Iran has been responsible in Syria’s loss of confidence in Turkey, but he also suggested that Iran had a change of attitude when the Arab Spring rebounded from the rest of the Arab world to Syria. “Iran was counting its blessing as it regarded the changes in administrations as a sign that the leaders cooperating with the West were being replaced, but it had a change of heart when the wind of change arrived in Syria,” Doğan commented.

“Iran will continue to stand beside Assad until the end because of the negative results a regime change will yield by decreasing Iran’s clout with the rest of the countries in the region, particularly with Iraq and Lebanon [as they have critical importance for the country's aspirations],” Doğan said, adding his suggestion that the end of the Assad regime would alter the dynamics in the region completely.

ARABAŞLIK ‘Assad in the grip of Iran’

ORSAM expert Ayhan, also an academic at Abant İzzet Baysal University in Western Anatolia, regarded Turkey’s stance a constructive one as the country reaffirmed its trust in the Assad regime to deal with its domestic problems through reforms. But the academic suggested that Iran was deliberately and systematically shaking Syria’s faith in Turkey under the table.

“Anti-Turkish propaganda saying that the country was providing intelligence to armed gangs in Syria and engaging in an ‘unholy alliance’ with Qatar under the supervision of the US to conspire against the [Syrian] regime has even been voiced by media outlets tied to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Ayhan elaborated, as he alleged that the propaganda “without a doubt” originated from Iran in the first place.

The expert stated that the moves by the Assad regime in accordance with Iran’s agenda which replaced democratic reforms are part of Assad’s plan to design the end of his own regime, as he heeds Iran’s calls for aggression against his own people, drawing the ire of the international community even further. But he also warned that the opposition forces in Syria, even if they manage to topple Assad, lack the cohesion to carry Syria into stability in the short run due to ethnic divisions.

Source: Todays Zaman