Hello and welcome to episode 231 of Turkey Book Talk.I'm William Armstrong here in Istanbul.
In this episode, we hear from Salim Cevik, Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, for which he recently wrote a very stimulating paper called, Turkey's Reconciliation Efforts in the Middle East, Ambitions and Constraints in a Changing Regional Order.
As the title suggests, the paper looks in great detail at President Erdogan's shift in policy in recent years, away from trying to overthrow the established regional order by supporting Muslim Brotherhood allies, and towards rapprochement with former foes like the ruling regimes in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, even Syria.
Of course, many of those countries are no fans of Hamas.But Turkey's rapprochement efforts, apart from the one with Israel, have not really been negatively affected by the Israel-Gaza war or the broader regional escalation.
We ruminate on that as well as the potential impact of the US presidential election on the region.Obviously, this episode is published on the date of that election, and you may well know the result by the time you listen to this.
But whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins, the developments we're talking about may well have dynamics of their own, independent of what happens. in Washington.
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We're now a few years into Turkey's bid to normalize relations with a range of former, maybe still, regional rivals.So I started by asking Salim to give us a bird's eye view about where these rapprochement efforts stand today.
Have they been successful or not from Ankara's perspective?
Well, I will necessarily give a partial answer, and I would say it's a mixed result.
And I think that that's not surprising to anyone, including the government in Ankara, because precisely, as you said, this reconciliation efforts of Turkey is part of a more region wide reset that followed after the upheaval of Arab uprisings.
And we witnessed the Abraham Accords, end of the Qatari blockade, Saudi-Iranian, rapprochement and all others, this forced Turkey kind of into a feeling of being more isolated in the region.
And when we say isolated in the region, it's not necessarily only in the Middle East, but it's also an isolation that encompasses East Mediterranean.
And combine this with Turkey's own economic problems and how foreign policy kind of undermines Turkey's economic potential.
So when we look at this within this context, Turkey initiated this reconciliation process by hoping to get out of this isolation and also by hoping that with better friendly relations with its neighbors, this will also help economic growth in both in the diplomatic and economic dimensions.
I think the results have been mixed. Turkey received substantial economic help from the Gulf, particularly from the UAE, but it is so far at least below Ankara's expectations.
There are many promises given, but it's kind of common for Gulf countries to throw out big numbers.It's also part of their PR process.So to what extent these numbers will materialize, we are yet to see that.
And when it comes to breakthrough of its diplomatic isolation, I think Ankara went a long way. relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Emiratis are already fully diplomatically normalized.
But that doesn't mean that there are significant geopolitical disagreements between these countries, particularly with Egypt over Libya.So the result, it's a mixed result, I would say.
Now, over the last year, there's been this threat of regional war and escalation hanging over everything, really.For obvious reasons, the Israeli operations in Gaza and the spillover into Lebanon more recently.
How has that affected Turkey's normalization process with various regional powers?Has it affected them at all?
Well, obviously, it ended the process with Israel.And what I will say now might come a bit surprising to those who do not follow it very well. impression and my analysis.It's not only an impression, I think I carefully analyzed it.
But my analysis leads to that Erdogan actually didn't want to end the reconciliation with Israel.
From day one, he was very much worried that once this war on Gaza started following October 7 attacks, he was very much concerned that this could harm Turkey's reconciliation process with Israel and with the larger region.
So he was very careful not to demonize Israel in the early days of the war. if you check his earlier statements, it's not like typical Erdogan at all.
He's basically calling for constraints, everybody should act responsibly, human life is sacred, fighting parties should be more considerate on the civilian losses, things like that.That's the main theme of Erdogan's speech.
And Turkey is ready to be a mediator.So along those lines.And he went on this reconciliatory rhetoric for at least two weeks.And then he slowly, slowly switched to a more harsher rhetoric.
And I think it's the domestic pressure that forced Erdogan to switch his rhetoric.It's So in this particular case, it's not Erdogan escalating for domestic political gains, which has been the case for the last decade when it comes to Israel.
This time it's the other way around.The domestic public is pressuring Erdogan to escalate. And in this way, Erdoğan is kind of a prisoner of his own narrative.
And that narrative is that Erdoğan has successfully propagated for years that Turkey is not a small country, not a medium country, it's a global power.It can design the entire region.
That's kind of the narrative of Erdoğan's foreign policy narrative that used in the domestic politics.It's part of Erdoğan's domestic persona that he raised Turkey from being a second-tier country to a global superpower, kind of.
So, once you convinced your power base to that, he's cornered because now that public is asking, okay, if we are so powerful, why aren't we doing anything?Well, the real answer is that Turkey really can't do much to stop this war.
But admitting this would be contrary to Erdogan's entire narrative that he developed over the last two decades. So he had to escalate at the rhetorical level.But one thing is important.
When he escalated rhetorically against Israel in the past, he always also accused other Arab leaders for not doing enough.And he would also underline that Turkey protects Palestinians more than other Arab countries.
Sometimes he would name specific countries like Egypt or the Emirates. While other Arab countries, Arab leaders abandoned Palestine, Erdogan himself didn't.
This was one of the most selling points of Erdogan at the domestic politics, in order to pump up his image of a protector of all Muslims, not only the Turks. But this time around, you never see this.He never cites any Arab leaders.
He never criticizes them for being passive.He never criticized them for not doing enough.And this also tells me that he has been very careful to protect this reconciliation process.And he didn't want this war to undermine the process that's going on.
And precisely because he has been so careful, I think it didn't harm Turkey's relations with the Emiratis.
For instance, previously, following the Abraham Accords, Turkey attacked the Emiratis and precisely accused MBS for being collaborative with Israel and abandoning the Palestinians.You never hear anything like that this time.
So, because of this carefulness of Erdogan, I would say, the war only damaged Turkish-Israeli relations, but didn't have spillover effects to the Gulf.
Yeah, I wanted to ask about that because it does seem that that's one of the key themes that's gone a bit unnoticed or unremarked upon since October 2023, which is, you know, it's not just that a lot of rhetorical fire has been directed towards Israel amid those operations in Gaza, but
If this had broken out in previous years, you could imagine easily how Erdogan would really harshly attack Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt as being sort of cowards and in the pocket of the Israelis and not properly representing the Muslim world and therefore implicitly putting himself forward as the kind of leader of this cause.
But we haven't seen that at all since last year, and that seems to be one of the big differences.And I suppose there is this other under-the-surface tension there, which
It's probably worth noting that all these countries that we're talking about in the Gulf are really not the biggest fans of Hamas or Iran or Hezbollah.And therefore, the perspective is rather different.
Obviously, Turkey has this rivalry under the surface with Iran, and it's had its differences with Hezbollah elements in Syria, obviously.
But you suspect that if this war had broken out years ago, the dynamics of where the rhetoric would be going, who Erdogan would be criticizing, would be different.There would be a lot more criticism of other Muslim powers.
He's being very, very careful on that front and it seems to be a deliberate sense of treading a very, very careful path because he doesn't want to upset this rapprochement that's been going on for a number of years now.
Yeah, you said it better than I could.And actually, it's not speculation at this stage.We witnessed previous rounds of tensions between Turkey and Israel, most clearly when, for instance, Jerusalem was declared the capital of Israel.
And whenever there are tensions, violence escalates either in West Bank or in Gaza.In every instance, Erdogan included Emiratis, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, sometimes Jordan, into his criticisms, and this time he didn't include any one of them.
So we are not actually speculating here.We know by experience that in the previous rounds he always attacked other Arab leaders, and this time he was very careful not to include them.
So this tells me and should tell us, I think, that how much this rapprochement is valuable for Erdogan, in a way kind of indispensable.He would go to lengths to protect it and not to undermine it, I would say.
And you make the point in the paper that the dynamics behind each rapprochement with each country in the region is different.Some of these processes have gone very far, like Egypt and the UAE, almost complete normalization, very rapid progress.
And others, like with Syria, for example, have stalled completely.And I just want to talk here about Syria because this is probably the most difficult file of all for Turkey to make progress in terms of rapprochement.
there's a huge amount of disagreements and a huge amount of practical issues on the ground that mean that taking a step on this issue on either side is going to be very, very difficult indeed, and it's going to set off a whole host of perhaps unknown consequences.
It's obviously very difficult to solve many of these disagreements between Ankara and Damascus, but could you just talk about why practically is that normalisation process stalling Why is it so difficult, basically, to make any progress on it?
There's a lot of talk, but for months, years even, hasn't really gone anywhere.Could you just talk about that?
Sure.I think you're right.This is the most difficult file, and it's not hard to understand why it's the most difficult file.Turkey has conducted four military operations inside Syrian territory.Turkey is
occupying a significant chunk of Syrian territory, keeping it under military control.And Turkey has established it as a political goal to undermine Assad's regime or topple down Assad's regime.
This was Turkey's officially declared Syria policy for a decade.But this policy actually in practice has changed since 2016.Since 2016, Turkey, although rhetorically continued with claiming that it wants Assad gone,
In practice, Turkey's Syria policy boils down to two issues.First is the prevention of a Kurdish political autonomy in Syria, or backrolling that political entity as much as Turkey could.And second, preventing new waves of migration to Turkey.
And once Turkey has made this big strategic change from toppling down the Assad regime as the main goal of Turkey's Syria policy to smaller items that I have cited, preventing of Kurdish autonomy and preventing of new waves of migration, this in a way provided the possibility that Turkey and Syria could talk at least.
I mean, there could be a talk between Ankara and Assad. because if Ankara is no longer interested in toppling down Assad, then okay, this provides the necessary condition for these two countries to talk to each other at least.
And this has been achieved.There have been significant behind-the-door talks so far, and I wouldn't be surprised at one point if Erdogan and Assad also meet.But this doesn't mean that
these two countries' communication will lead to the solution of the problems between each other.And here, the biggest problem is that their demands are reconcilable.
Syria, for obviously understandable reasons, demands Turkey to leave Syrian territory, to return the territories that it keeps under military control to the Assad regime. It's inevitable for any country to demand that.
But if you look at it from Turkey's perspective, this is not an easy demand to meet.
Because precisely if Turkey leaves Syria, at the moment that Turkey leaves, it's a protective umbrella over the Idlib region particularly, where Turkey doesn't itself control but provides military protection to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham government in Idlib.
At the moment that Turkey leaves Idlib unprotected, this will be kind of a ripe fruit for the Syrian army.
Syrian army will take over Idlib, which means that hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, will move to Turkish border, which leads to either a humanitarian catastrophe and another round of migration crisis, probably both of them at the same time.
Turkey cannot return these people back, but cannot allow them either. So if preventing new migration to Turkey is one of the primary goals in Syria, Turkey has to stay in northern Syria.
The moment that Turkey leaves, there will be more migration towards Turkey.So there is this contradiction between Turkey's aims and the results of reconciliation with Syria.
The second element, when it comes to the Kurds, Turkey's desire to prevent Kurdish political autonomy in Syria, here there is still, there might be still, and here I am being a little bit speculative, there might be still some room for cooperation between Ankara and Damascus.
Both can cooperate against an anti-Kurdish agenda.This is actually the only way that Turkey and Syrian reconciliation could move forward.
I'm not saying this because I'm supporting this as a political agenda, but from an outside analyst, as far as I can see, this is the main point that these two capitals can agree over.
And right now, as you know, our listeners would also know, Turkey has suddenly, from kind of out of the blue, initiated a new peace process, or seems to be starting a new peace process with Kurds inside Turkey.
So if, and here I'm again being very speculative because these are all quite new, couple of days only, but if Erdogan is serious about reconciling with Kurds, this would also involve that Turkey will not act against Kurdish political autonomy in northern Syria, which means that, probably would mean that,
the only point of cooperation between Ankara and Damascus will disappear.So at this stage, Ankara has two options.Either it will make peace with its own Kurds, which will mean that it will no longer consider Kurdish authorities in Syria as an enemy.
that would mean basically the end of detente with Syria, or Turkey's own peace with its own Kurds will fail, in which case then Turkey and Syria will collaborate more openly, eagerly against Kurdish political authorities in Syria.
So we will see how this will go, but Turkey's reconciliation with Syria in a way depends on its own relations with the Kurds, with its own Kurds basically.
Yeah, I want to come on to the emergence or re-emergence of the peace process with the Kurds later on.But yeah, like you say, it could go either way in Syria.
I mean, there are wild scenarios even I've seen in the last couple of weeks about a re-eruption of the war.Recently, there was a report in Turkey Gazette about Ankara-backed rebels in northern Syria basically planning a new advance to retake Aleppo.
But equally, like you say, it wouldn't be surprising to see Turkey basically just sell those Syrian rebels out and do a deal with Assad.It really wouldn't be surprising either way if it goes from one to the other.
But there is a limit of Turkey's selling out the rebels, because Turkey's hands are not very free in that sense, because at the moment Turkey completely abandons them.
I think the Erdogan regime at this moment is not ready to face the migration results of this quote-unquote selling out.So I think to the extent that Turkey and Syria can talk and reconcile their relations,
The more difficult part is Turkey's protection of the Syrian opposition and whether to what extent Turkey and at what stage Turkey can abandon them.
Since this is the more difficult part, it's most likely that this will be postponed, but cooperation against Kurds is an easier dimension, given, provided that Turkey's own peace process with the Kurds doesn't work very well and bring out quick results.
It also is also dependent on American presence in Syria, but I think we can talk them off later on if you have a question about the American elections.
Yeah, absolutely.Let's talk about that now.I mean, we're recording this less than two weeks from the US presidential election, and we're going to be publishing actually on the day or the morning of that vote.
And a lot of speculation about what a Trump or Harris win would mean, particularly a Trump win.Obviously, the question of isolationism potentially accelerating the US withdrawal from the region.
We've seen various reports about US planning to withdraw soldiers from Syria and Iraq.
That seems to be something that would potentially happen whether Trump or Harris wins, but you could easily imagine a Trump election victory accelerating that process.
Could you just speculate here, how could the contrasting election results affect the dynamics of rapprochement in the region that we're talking about?
Would it affect them at all, or are these dynamics between Turkey and various other countries independent of this broader shadow of the US in the region?
I think it is very much dependent on American foreign policy to start.The entire regional reconciliation started basically end of 2020, early 2021.And it's not a coincidence.That's basically the end of Trump rule and coming of President Biden.
Change in American foreign policy in a way triggered this reconciliation by various ways.First of all, With the end of Trump, the Saudis kind of lost the blank check that they received from the Trump administration.
And once that blank check is gone, there will be more initiatives to act more reasonably and more peacefully and more diplomatically in their foreign policies.
So a change from Trump to Biden, in a way, forced Saudis and the Emiratis to seek more diplomatic solutions to the regional problems.That's number one.
Number two, that's not necessarily linked to Biden or Trump, but there is this sense of being American withdrawal from the region.That's, in a way, a trigger of all reconciliation processes in the region.
The idea that Americans will be gone soon, and if they are gone, we have to sort out our own problems by ourselves.
and also pushed particularly countries who have better relations with Washington against Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis, but also others, that they have to act quickly and they have to find solutions to their problems on their own.
So this American foreign policy and changes in American foreign policy is pretty much shapes the entire regional reconciliation process. That's the general observation.
But if you go into the deeper and on concrete cases, I think first I should start with the caveat that whatever we speak about Trump is speculative because he's entirely unpredictable.But given his first term, if we take it as a starting point,
his record over his first term.One thing is that American withdrawal from Syria and Iraq could be faster under Trump administration.
And if that is the case, then it would provide a bigger opportunity for Turkey and Syria to cooperate against the Kurds.So in that sense, an American withdrawal would make it easier for Turkey and Syria to cooperate against the Kurds.
That's number one. Number two is, the biggest question I think is, if Trump comes again and if it carries a vigorously anti-Iranian policy as he did in his first term, would this upset the regional balance?
Would this undermine ongoing reconciliation between Iran and other Gulf countries?
It's difficult to answer this easily, but my talks with people who have better knowledge on the internal dynamics of these Gulf countries is that they are pretty much committed to solving their problems with Iran by diplomatic means.
their so far experience tells them that fighting with Iran, even when Americans are more engaged with the region, is more difficult than negotiating with Iran and using their financial powers to negotiate with Iranian regime.
So if those people who know better than me are right in what they told to me, and I think they are right, Even under a Trump administration, the Gulf countries will not pursue a rigorously anti-Iranian agenda.
They do not trust Washington administration in that sense, getting on board with Trump in a very radically anti-Iranian agenda. And they also see and observe how Israel, in a way, also undermines Iran's power in the region.
So they would see no reason to be more engaged in this anti-Iranian war.They are very happy with their position being neutral, not picking any sides, not being involved.On the one hand, continuing their diplomatic rapprochement with Iran.
On the other hand, happily watching from outside how American and Israel military power is crippling down Iranian influence in the region.I see no reason for these countries to change their position.
Even if Trump promotes an anti-Iranian agenda, I think they will not jump on board.So in that sense, a Trump administration will probably not undermine this regional reconciliation going on between Iran and other Arab countries.
But it will have an impact on Turkey's own relations with Syria, Iraq and Iran, because if Americans are out, that means that there is bigger room of cooperation between Turkey and Syria on the one hand.
This is not in my paper, but I think it's time to also mention this.There will be bigger tensions between Turkey and Iran, both over Syria and over Iraq fronts.
Something else on the Iraqi front is the obvious presence of the PKK there.For the last few years, we've seen Turkey's operations against the PKK really focusing basically in Northern Iraq.
Those operations have been pushed pretty much away from Turkish territory into those headquarters basically of the PKK in Iraq.
But as we've been saying earlier, in the last few days, we've seen the re-emergence of talk about a potential new peace process with the Kurdish movement. specifically with Erdogan, who's in jail.
But that factor of the PKK headquarters in Iraq, the Syrian factor that we've been talking about as well, just shows that this really isn't a domestic story.It's a regional story.
There's different factions within these Kurdish forces that have perhaps different interests to Erdogan, even though Erdogan remains the main leader who everybody in that movement kind of bows down to.
just begs the question, you know, where this process is going to go and, you know, how much regional considerations as have been touted by Erdogan and indeed Bachelet in their statements on their initial statements on this bid.
There's other speculation about it being motivated by domestic political interests and, you know, the bid to rewrite the constitution to gain
the Kurdish party's support for that constitutional change and therefore allow Erdogan to extend his time in power for another presidential term.
There's a lot of different considerations, but just focusing back on the regional one, how do you see that beyond the kind of Syrian theatre, perhaps considering the situation in northern Iraq?
How does a potential new Kurdish peace process fit into these other years-long processes of rapprochement that Turkey's been conducting with various neighbours and other regional countries?
Well, while Turkey initiated the reconciliation process with its kind of former rivals, here we are talking about Syria, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Emirates.Simultaneously, Turkey's relations with Iran was going down.
So there is, this is kind of an actual equilibrium.To the extent when Turkey has better relations with Iran, it has more tensions with Gulf Arabs and vice versa.
when Turkish-Iranian relations get tenser, it's easier for Turkey to reconcile with Iran's rivals in the region.And this has been one of the, not drivers, but one of the enabling factors of Turkey's own reconciliation in the last couple of years.
So Turkish-Iranian relations have been going down, mostly due to Turkey's and Iran's opposite positions in Syria and more so in Iraq.
Turkey and Iran has been kind of engaged in a battle of supremacy, of being the hegemon over Iraqi politics ever since American occupation and also American downsizing over Iraq.And in that struggle, actually, Iran has been winning.
Despite Turkey's all attempts to influence Baghdad regime, to motivate the Baghdad government to move away from Iran and to get better relations with Turkey, all these policies have failed so far.
Iran remains the dominant power in Iraq and will likely remain so.And when it comes to the Kurdish regions in northern Iraq, this rivalry between Turkey and Iran sits nicely with intra-Kurdish politics as well.
So Turkey, and this has been traditionally the case, Turkey has better relations with the Barzanis and Iran has better relations with Talibanis.
And this, the more Turkey and Iranian tensions escalate, actually this rivalry between Kurdish factions also escalates. and vice versa.The more these factions escalate, the more Turkey's and Iranian tensions also rise on the region.
And in this equilibrium, PKK has always better relations with Talibanis, basically the Kurds who are on the Iranian side.
So if there is a peace process, and here again we are necessarily speculative, that also involves PKK, and that also leads to kind of dismantling of the organization, and I don't think it will lead to that stage.
If all these things happen, and if PKK stops being a factor in intra-Kurdish politics in northern Iraq, this would also make it easier for Turkey to make peace with other Kurdish groups, basically the Talibanis.
And in this sense, Turkish and Iranian patronage over Kurdish politics can change in different directions that I can't predict at this stage.Let me stop speculation here.
But my more realistic expectation is that PKK will remain a powerful military factor inside northern Iraq. And PKK headquarters are deep south, close to Iranian border, under Taliban region.
And despite Turkey's military advantages and successes over PKK and successful pushing PKK away from its borders, Turkey cannot at this stage dismantle the PKK's military power in Kandil Mountains.
So for the foreseeable future, despite all these reconciliation, these peace processes, and even there is progress in this peace process, I think it is unlikely that Turkey will be able to dismantle the PKK's power in northern Iraq.
That means that Turkish-Iranian rivalry over northern Iraq and their patronage of different Kurdish groups will continue unchanged.
This also leads me to think that the main driver for the recent peace process is more domestic politics rather than regional politics.
Because I see no reason how Turkey can dismantle PKK's military strength in Iraq, despite all its military success, despite the success of drones, despite pushing PKK further to the south.
Turkey cannot destroy PKK's military power entirely because that
Geography doesn't allow it because PKK's headquarters are too far away from Turkish borders and basically too close to Iranian borders and Iran will never allow Turkey to be that dominant, militarily active in a place that is so close to its border.
I was reading the report, I was just thinking that perhaps one of the more underappreciated effects of this whole normalisation process, with its many different aspects, is that over the last few years, it's kind of made Turkey a bit less unique, and it's lost a bit of newsworthiness, basically.
It's kind of lost its exceptionalism.It's just become
another regional country because before, when it was odds with Saudi, Israel, UAE, Egypt, you could really make the argument that it actually was a genuinely revisionist actor that posed this genuine challenge to the regional order.
And as we were saying before, it had these ambitions to upturn the regional balance of power and become basically the Muslim world's prime actor. But sometimes that's mentioned in domestic politics.
It's still there under the surface in speeches delivered by Erdogan and others.But in terms of the broader messaging to the outside world, that's all kind of gone now.And in a way, it makes Turkey a bit less interesting regionally.
It's just another one of these countries that is kind of looking after its own interests and trying to leverage various relationships.Do you think that's a useful way of
of kind of viewing these rapprochement dynamics to see Turkey just becoming just another normal country that's not trying to basically revise the entire regional order, but it's just trying to go back to looking after its own national interests, essentially.
Is that a useful way of looking at things, or is that too simplistic?
It's not too simplistic.Let me paraphrase what you said.I think it is basically Turkey's own realization of its own limits.And without that realization, this rapprochement process would never start.
So Turkey kind of realized that its big ambitious goals of, as you said, redesigning the region and turning things upside down has failed.But to be fair, it's not only Turkey that has failed in this regard.
all major actors who kind of tried to unilaterally dominate the region over the years has witnessed that they all failed to do so.
So Turkey initially started these big ambitions with the start of the Arab uprisings, hoping that AK Party franchises would take over in every country.That started in Tunisia, Egypt.
All parties would be kind of Turkey's allies and allies but also junior partners. Turkey would stand up as the big brother, Erdogan the natural leader.This was kind of Erdogan's vision of a new Middle East.That failed.
That failed in Egypt once Sisi orchestrated that military coup and toppled down the Muslim Brotherhood government there.
That failed in Syria when the Syrian uprising has militarily lost due to Iranian and Russian intervention, but at the end of the day they lost. So, Turkey's ambitions to shape the region failed.
But then we have seen other countries, for instance, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates also started more aggressive foreign policies.They tried to shape the region, but they also failed.They failed to bow down Qatar.
Their Qatari blockade basically backfired.One of the aims of the blockade was to isolate Qatar from Turkey and Iran, but the result was Qatari dependency on Turkish and Iranian support.So, it actually
deepened the ties between Qatar and Turkey and Qatar and Iran.So it ended up with the direct opposite results of what it expected.Saudi interventions in Yemen failed.
So Saudi Arabia also failed to redesign the region, or Saudi Emirati, let's put it that way.Emirati's attempts to shape Libya, for instance, failed due to Turkish intervention.
But the overall thing is that they couldn't also design the region along their wishes.And then it comes to Iran.Iran seems as kind of the winner of the whole Arab uprisings.I think that's fair to accept this.
But we've also seen the limitations of Iranian power.Iran become more and more limited to the Shia ghetto.
And Iran's influence beyond Syria and beyond the Shia power base became both more limited, but also its control over its proxies, allies, whatever, however you call them, these Shia groups, also becomes less clear, particularly after the killing of Qasem Soleimani.
So Iran also kind of witnessed the limitations of its own power.
Its proxies have been very successful fighting forces, both in Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon, but they have been less successful in establishing political stability or creating political stability.Iraq is still a very unstable region.
Syrian regime is still a weak regime.And these are all we are talking before October 7.And after October 7, Hezbollah is also pretty much crippled down in Lebanon. Iran also failed to dominate the region.
So if we talk about these three big contenders, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, they all failed to dominate the region.They all failed to shape the region in their own vision.
And it is this realization of their own limitations that enabled this reconciliation process at the beginning. And I think here Turkey is, as you said, is no longer a revisionist power, no longer.
It won't hit the headlines as it used to be, but it's not unique to Turkey.The same also goes for other major countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
That was Salim Cevik, many thanks to him for joining for episode 231.
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