Tehran, Iran, Oct. 4
By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Tehran discussing regional politics with Iranian leaders. Before the trip, he said he would bring a “roadmap” home.
It is said that in meetings with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, the Turkish leader will particularly discuss a united front against the Kurdistan Region as well as “Islamic State” (IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh).
After being officially welcomed by Rouhani, Erdogan and his Iranian counterpart immediately sat for talks behind closed doors. Their negotiations came a day after Turkish Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar met with Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami in Tehran.
Things have been growing more intimate between Tehran and Ankara over the past couple of years. Prior to that, the two regional powers were at loggerheads. In 2014, an Iranian diplomat had accused Turkey of having prolonged the Syrian crisis by insisting on the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad. Later, Erdogan said Iran wanted to supersede ISIS, demanding Tehran to withdraw the forces that it supported from Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
However, during the mid-2016 failed coup in Turkey Iranian leaders had a “restless night”, as President Rouhani later noted, voicing support for Erdogan and his government.
In later months, Turkey became part of a series of meetings called the Astana talks, attended by Iran and Russia, over diplomatic and military solutions to the Syrian crisis.
Much advancement came out of that cooperation, so much so that Iranian military commanders in recent weeks said there remained less than two months to the end of ISIS.
In August, Iran’s military chief, General Mohammad Baqeri, met Erdogan on a visit that Turkish media said was the first to Turkey by an Iranian military chief of staff since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin described the visit as “fruitful and successful”, adding that talks focused on counter-terrorism, the battle with ISIS, and a joint effort by Iran, Turkey and Russia to stem the fighting in parts of Syria.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted Baqeri as saying he had agreed with Turkey to hold joint training courses and increase counter-terrorism intelligence sharing.
But a possible joint response against a Kurdish secession referendum in Iraq is no lesser an issue with Ankara and Tehran during Erdogan’s visit.
Iran and Turkey have fiercely opposed the recent referendum in Kurdistan Region, which overwhelmingly supported secession.
Fearing Kurdish separatism within their own borders, Iran and Turkey have threatened to join Baghdad in imposing economic sanctions on Iraqi Kurdistan and launched joint military exercises with Iraqi troops at their borders with Kurdistan Region.
Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region announced on Tuesday it was calling presidential and parliamentary elections for Nov. 1. Baghdad has responded with further punitive measures, having already slapped sanctions on Kurdish banks and halting foreign currency transfers to the Kurdish region.
Iraq’s central government and its neighbors fear the vote in favor of secession could spark another, wider conflict in the region to add to the war in Syria, and fear it could derail the fight against ISIS.
The Kurds are the region’s fourth largest ethnic group, spread across Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, all of which oppose any moves towards sovereignty.
While Erdogan continues to threaten Kurdistan with more boycotts, Iran has closed its aerial border with the Region and denounced the referendum as “a plot” by Tel Aviv to sow the seed of discord in the neighborhood.