Tehran, February 14: Turkey’s foreign minister travels to Tehran this week to try to salvage a U.N.-brokered uranium swap deal amid growing calls for sanctions against Iran, but few expect Ankara’s mediation to produce a breakthrough.
Turkey, which has strengthened its ties with Iran since the Islamist-rooted AK Party took power in Ankara, has offered to use its access to the Iranian leadership to help solve a dispute between global powers and Tehran over its nuclear programme.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s order last week to start production of higher-grade uranium exposes the Islamic republic to new calls for U.N. sanctions from Western powers.
“If Ankara does not manage to bring Tehran around to a reasonable position on the uranium enrichment issue, it runs the risk of being isolated among its allies,” Semih Idiz, a foreign affairs commentator for liberal Milliyet newspaper, said in a column titled “Ankara’s Iran gambit”.
Idiz said Ahmet Davutoglu’s visit could turn into a litmus test of Turkey’s influence in the region.
Davutoglu will meet his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki on Tuesday for talks that will include the potential swap deal, which Western powers see as a means to ensure Tehran does not further enrich its uranium for potential use in a nuclear weapon. Iran denies it intends to build a nuclear bomb.
Turkish officials say the visit might also include meetings with Ahmadinejad, whom Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has described as a “close friend”, and Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation chief Ali Akbar Salehi.
“We are going to talk about the swap proposal. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s proposal is still valid. We believe negotiations and diplomacy are still the best way to resolve this problem,” a Turkish government official said.
Turkey has offered itself as a third country where the uranium could be exchanged.
Although the swap proposal remains officially on the table, a senior diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters it was “all but dead” given the profound mutual mistrust and Iran’s defiant launch of higher scale enrichment.
“CHANGE OF AXIS”?
Questions have multiplied in recent months over whether NATO member Turkey, slighted by perceptions the European Union is ambiguous about Ankara’s EU membership bid, is turning away from the West to deepen ties with fellow Muslim nations. A worsening of ties with Israel has also fed into such fears.
Ankara rejects talk of a “change of axis” in its foreign policy, and has said it can use its diplomatic clout to stop the proliferation of nuclear bombs in the region.
But some in Europe believe Turkey’s role has been more of a hindrance than a help, by undermining Tehran’s isolation.
“There is an acknowledgement Turkey could be a vital ally. At the same time, there is a concern that this policy goes against European interests,” Daniel Korski, from the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
Some diplomats and analysts are sceptical Ankara can persuade Iran to abandon any ambitions it might have for a nuclear bomb, and some believe Iran is using Turkey to its advantage in its standoff with the West.
If Turkey has the ear of Iranian leaders, analysts say, it has failed to deliver the tough message the West was expecting of it by appearing too sympathetic towards Iran.
—Agencies