Turkey and Iran: From an Ambivalent Honeymoon to Divorce?

Iran Pulse (ACIS) no. 55, 3 February 2013
The Alliance Center for Iranian Studies (ACIS)

Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak *

In December 2012, the Turkish media announced the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad had cancelled a one day visit to Konya to mark the 739th anniversary of the passing of the great Sufi mystic Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi (RFERL, 17 December 2012). On the one hand, this cancelation revealed the tension between the two countries over the dominance in the region, which had been evident ever since Premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ambitions began to clash with Ahmedinejad’s, especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. On the other hand, the bilateral economic relations between Tehran and Ankara may indicate close cooperation despite Western pressure and imposed sanctions against Iran.

* Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak ( hayeytan@post.tau.ac.il) is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of History in Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. He is a junior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.

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