ISTANBUL, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to land in Iran's capital of Tehran for a crucial visit on Wednesday, which analysts say may help boost cooperation in war-torn Iraq and Syria but is not likely to produce an all-around deal.
"Given the fluidity of conditions on the ground and the differences in their strategic approaches to the region, deepening cooperation might prove difficult to achieve," observed Faruk Logoglu, a former senior Turkish diplomat.
NO LASTING CONVERGENCE OF INTERESTS
Erdogan spoke on Sunday of a road map to take shape following his talks with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the independence referendum by the Iraqi Kurdish region and the Astana talks about peacemaking in Syria.
Ankara and Tehran have converging interests in terms of opposing the Kurdish independence bid and preventing the establishment of a Kurdish belt in northern Syria, said Yasar Yakis, a former Turkish foreign minister.
The convergence of interests in Iraq and Syria may not, however, last forever, he added.
"Turkey may reach an agreement with (Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud) Barzani for continued pumping of oil in exchange for more efficient cooperation in fighting the PKK terror and in an accommodation for Kirkuk's Turkmens," he explained.
Ankara has been fighting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey's southeast and northern Iraq to suppress its decades-old insurgency, while the wellbeing of Turkmens in Kirkuk, a disputed territory in northern Iraq, is a top concern of the Turkish side.
Turkish Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar was in Tehran on Monday, where he met with top officials including his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Bagheri and President Rouhani.
"The armed forces of Iran and Turkey can develop constructive relations in addressing regional threats through development of cooperation and transfer of experiences in various sectors," Rouhani said in his meeting with Akar, according to the presidency's website.
Amid concerns that borders may change in the region, Bagheri led a large deletion to Ankara in August, becoming Iran's first top commander to visit the Turkish capital ever since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
While Akar was in Tehran, Turkish and Iranian troops conducted manoeuvers separately with Iraqi troops along the Iraqi Kurdish border in a bid to force the Kurds to back down, whose insistence on pressing ahead with the vote on secession on Sept. 25 has angered and incurred punitive measures from countries in the region and beyond.
Iran has halted all transportation of fuel products to and from the Kurdish region as part of the sanctions imposed upon demand by the Iraqi central government, while Ankara has not cut off the Kurdish oil pipeline on Turkish land as it has threatened to do.
Oil sales are seen as the lifeline of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government headed by Barzani.
Despite opposition from Baghdad, Turkey signed a deal with Iraqi Kurds in 2014 on the flow of oil to Turkey.
"It does not seem possible that Turkey and Iran would agree on a plan for joint action against Barzani under the current circumstances," remarked Cahit Armagan Dilek, director of the Ankara-based 21st Century Turkey Institute.
In his view, Baghdad may well cooperate with Ankara and Tehran separately against the Kurdish region, but that would not mean joint action by the three countries.
Tehran has been militarily supporting the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government in its fight against the Islamic State, while Ankara had accused Baghdad not long ago of sectarianism and Tehran of Persian expansionism.
Dilek, a former staff officer in the Turkish military, believes that cooperation between the two countries in a concrete way could be possible only if Turkey meets Iran's expectations.
Tehran would expect Ankara to give up its discourse about Persian expansionism in the region, downgrade its relations with Israel and threat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as legitimate, he said.
Concerned that the United States, its NATO ally, may be preparing the ground for the emergence of a Kurdish state in both Syria and Iraq, Turkey has brought its Syria policy more in line with Iran and Russia since last year.
"DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED POSITIONS"
Visits to Tehran by top Turkish officials come after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Erdogan in Ankara last week over regional security issues like Iraq and Syria on top of boosting bilateral ties.
Under the Astana deal, Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed to deploy military units to monitor truce in four de-escalation zones in Syria, including Idlib now controlled by jihadists.
The increasing diplomatic traffic between Ankara, Tehran and Moscow points to an effort to deepen cooperation on both Syria and Iraq, but differences among them could eventually overtake their commonalities, said Logoglu.
"All the three look for exclusive spheres of influence based on disparate elements in Iraq and Syria," he said. "Turkey with the Sunni, Iran with the Shia and Russia with al-Assad and the Kurds."
Following his meeting with Putin, Erdogan said both Ankara and Moscow support the territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria.
For his part, Putin simply referred to a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry regarding the Kurdish independence bid, saying Moscow's attitude is reflected in the statement.
The ministry statement, issued one day before Putin's arrival in Ankara, voiced Moscow's commitment to the territorial integrity of Iraq and other countries in the region while also stating that "Moscow respects the national aspirations of the Kurds."
Ankara's cooperation with Moscow and Tehran following a readjustment of its policy on Syria has been widely lauded at home, as many agree that the collapse of the Syrian government would lead to a breakup of the country and to the emergence of a Kurdish state along Turkey's border.
Yakis feels that Turkish and Iranian cooperation on Syria may, despite common interests in blocking the establishment of a Kurdish state, has its limits as the two "have diametrically opposed positions on other chapters of the Syrian crisis."
Ankara supported until last year, together with its Western allies, rebels fighting to topple the Syrian government, while Moscow and Tehran have been Damascus' key allies in the six-year-old civil war.
In addition, Turkey wants Sunni groups to have a share in the government to be formed after the war, concerned about increasing Iranian influence in its southern neighbors.
Iran is taking steps against the Kurdish referendum more in response to Baghdad's demands, said Dilek.
It is widely argued that Iran has sway over some opposition parties in the Iraqi Kurdish region such as the Kurdistan Patriotic Union, through which Tehran may alternatively be planning to exert control over the Kurdish administration, observed Dilek.
The apparent rapprochement between Ankara and its neighbors comes at a time when Turkey is said to be drifting away from its Western partners to forge an alliance with Eurasian powers.
Whether Ankara's increasing contacts with Russia and Iran will turn into a sort of alliance or not, its Western allies would be highly disturbed by their NATO partner's course of action, the analysts told Xinhua.
Noting Turkey's move from one block to another would be like a tectonic shift, Yakis said, "It would not take place without serious consequences as the countries to be negatively affected by such a shift would not remain idle. (U.S.) President Trump's especially strong anti-Iran policy will make Turkey's task all the more difficult."
Turkey's ties with the West have soured particularly in recent years.
Ankara, among others, has been blasting Washington for heavily arming Kurdish militia forces in Syria which may attempt to unite in the future with the Iraqi Kurds to go independent.
President Erdogan has long talked about joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization out of apparent frustration with the European Union, with which Turkey's accession talks have stalled.
There is no doubt that Turkey's increasing cooperation with its Eurasian partners would make the U.S. feel concerned and view Ankara in a more and more negative way, said Dilek.
Noting such a development would harm Ankara's cooperation with the West, he argued that Turkey could suffer as well as it has not yet managed to create concrete areas of cooperation with its Eurasian powers.
