"Turkish-Iranian Relations
By K. Gajendra Singh
Al-Jazeerah, May 21, 2006
The illegal US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq has, predictably, opened a Pandora's box in the region, bringing about unforeseen turmoil among Iraq's neighbors including Turkey and Iran.
From the ashes of the Ottoman Empire emerged the secular Turkish republic under Kemal Ataturk, and--in spite of historical enmity and rivalry--normal relations with Iran. After World War II, Britain and the US allied with them and Iraq and Pakistan against an expanding Soviet Russia, with Turkey seemingly an unsinkable NATO aircraft carrier armed with a million men. Turkey's relations with Iran after Khomeini's 1979 revolution sank, as Tehran quit all western alliances and old strategic and religious suspicions reemerged. Ankara remained by-and-large neutral in the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war."
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