Emerging Middle Powers in the Middle East: Iran, Turkey and their Struggle for Regional Hegemony

In the literature of middle powers, much attention has been paid to such “established” middle powers as the “BRICS”, while the “emerging” middle powers are thoroughly underexplored. By considering the latters more revisionist than the formers in terms of pursuing economic, military, cultural, religious and political goals to challenge the existing order, I argue that Iran and Turkey have in turn exploited crisis, challenges and external stimuli occurred upon the 2011 Arab revolts to defy the existing order itself and take advantage of the new regional power reconfiguration as well. It especially will focus on Iran’s and Turkey’s respective struggle in gaining the upper hand over the regional hegemony with regard to such issues as: a) the Qatar crisis with the GCC and its dominant player, Saudi Arabia; b) the Yemeni conflict; c) the Syrian quagmire; d) economic opportunities under the JCPOA; e) energy relations and military convergence with Russia. How have Iran and Turkey shaped their regional agenda to counterbalance Saudi’s outreach in the Middle East as well as to ensure an understanding with Moscow? How have Ankara and Tehran moulded their reciprocal historical geopolitical competition around the above mentioned issues? How have they tried to both serve as role models based on their soft power and build new coalitions? What could be expected in the near future from such a regional restructuring resulting from a liquid and penetrated regional system? This paper relies on extensive references to the recent landmark literature about middle powers in the Middle East (Ehteshami 2014; Fawcett 2017; Önis and Kutlay 2017) to show how Turkey’s and Iran’s approaches towards the aforementioned issues have pushed one another to turn the regional balance of power to their respective advantage. References: Anoushiravan Ehteshami, “Middle East Middle Powers: Regional Role, International Impact”, Uluslararası İlişkiler, 11: 42 (Summer 2014), 29-49. Louise Fawcett, “States and sovereignty in the Middle East: myths and realities”, International Affairs 93: 4 (2017), 789–807 Ziya Öniş & Mustafa Kutlay, “The dynamics of emerging middlepower influence in regional and global governance: the paradoxical case of Turkey”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 71: 17 (2017), 164-183