Turkey's Growing Relations with Iran and Arab Middle East

During its final two centuries, the Ottoman Empire failed to introduce an "exit strategy" from the Middle East. On account of this uneasy disengagement, Republican Turkey turned back and followed an anti-revisionist policy toward the region. In the 1920s, the revolutionary leadership of the Turkish Republic focused on internal reformation and modernization programs, which made a structural transformation in domestic politics and systemic change that further forced Turkish governments not to pursue an active policy in the region. During the Cold War, Turkey's Middle East policy was not viewed as friendly toward the Middle East while there was a strong security ties with Iran, especially in Central Treaty Organization. However, Turkey followed a more aggressive and coercive entrance strategy toward the region by the end of the Cold War. The Justice and Development Party has made a shift and attempted to exercise soft power policies to normalize its relations with Arab nations and Iran by improving societal and economic interdependence relations. In order to understand the new activism in Turkish-Iranian relations, it is necessary to provide a historical context of the changing dynamic of regional politics by analyzing threat perceptions and security alignments from the perspective of developing Turkish-Iran relations.