Turkey-Iran Relations Through Syria And Iraq Cases: Cooperation or Competition?

Started as a civilian protest in 2011 and evolved into civil war in a short time, Syrian crisis has become the primacy issue on Turkey Iran relations. Pursuing the policies that aimed completely different objectives and acting as not aware of damages that civil war had caused both themselves and the region deepened the crisis. Power vacuum set grounds to interference of non-regional actors such as the USA and Russia, the crisis has turned into a multi-agency conflict. One of the reason of detente period of Turkey Iran relations in 2017 was Syrian crisis that stuck into dead end. And the other reason of detente was Independence Referendum in Kurdish region in Iraq. Unlike the example in Syria, Turkey and Iran has been aware of the danger of referendum and acted against it. Among other reasons, joint position and determination of Turkey and Iran as the main regional powers against it has resulted as failure of the referendum. These two cases show that although they do not have a playmaker role on their own, Turkey and Iran will be able to play an active role in events that directly affect the region if they act jointly. When looking the damages that the crisis in the region has created, cooperation is the rational behavior for both states