Turkey has received quite a bit of notice recently due to its increasingly close ties with the Islamic Republic. This attention intensified earlier this week when The Guardian published an interview with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in which he called Iran “a friend” and cast doubt on Western suspicions that Iran intends to develop a nuclear weapon.
But this is not the first time that Turkey has sought to use the conflict between the United States and Iran to its advantage.
In 1980, following the Iranian revolution, the United States and Turkey signed a Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement (DECA), which committed Washington to provide Turkey with significant military and economic support – in exchange for access to Turkish military bases – as a way to balance Iranian power in the region. The DECA laid the groundwork for closer U.S.-Turkish ties and was key to Turkey’s participation in the first Gulf War.
As Flynt Leverett noted in Politico yesterday, times have changed and this time Turkey is exploiting the current U.S.-Iranian standoff to improve its ties with its southeastern neighbor.
– Ben Katcher