Why Iran regime’s potential collapse spells more risk than benefit for Turkey

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned on Thursday against military intervention in Iran, amid continued uncertainty over whether US President Donald Trump would order attacks over the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters.

Speaking at a news conference in Istanbul, Turkey’s top diplomat said, “We believe Iran’s internal problems should be resolved amongst themselves.” He pinned the wave of protests sweeping Iran on economic woes that were being mistaken for an ideological uprising against the regime itself. “What gets confused here is that hardships people face due to economic and other difficulties can appear as an ideological uprising against the regime; in reality, this constitutes a gray area,” Fidan contended.  

His remarks echo earlier statements by fellow Turkish officials, as unrest that erupted in late December over Iran’s crumbling economy has ballooned into one of the most sustained and widespread protest movements the clerical regime has faced since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought it to power. Estimates of the death toll vary, and Iran has not released any official figure for how many protesters have been killed. But over 1,000 are thought to have perished, with the Norway-based Iran Human Rights organization putting the number late Wednesday at 3,428. In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the figure as an “exaggeration” and part of a “misinformation campaign” designed to generate excuses for striking his country.

Fidan said Trump’s policies suggested that he was disinclined to intervene militarily. Trump does not have a “strong preference so far for the use of ground forces,” Fidan noted. Trump’s rhetoric appears to be bearing him out — for now. After threatening to punish Iran for the indiscriminate murder of civilians, Trump asserted late Wednesday that the killing in Iran had stopped and Tehran had told his administration that arrested protesters would not be executed. Analysts say, however, US intervention remains a real possibility.

Fear factors

Either way, the last thing Ankara wants to see, for several reasons, is the Iranian regime collapse. The most pressing worry for Turkey is the potential influx of millions of Iranian refugees. The two countries share a 530-kilometer (330-mile) border. Turkey is already home to more than 3 million Syrians fleeing conflict at home. Hostility toward the Syrians has turned violent as Turkey’s economy continues to stagnate, whittling down the popularity of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party.

Turkey’s equally big fear is that a dissolution of central authority would encourage Iran’s restive ethnic minorities, notably the Kurds, the Baloch and the Azeris, to break away. This would torpedo Turkey's ongoing efforts to stifle a four-decade Kurdish fight for autonomy within its own borders while concurrently seeking to dismantle more than a decade of Kurdish self-rule in Syria.

The swift spread of the protests to Kurdish-dominated provinces such as Ilam and Kermanshah has mobilized armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups that are based in Iraq. On Jan. 8, seven Iranian Kurdish parties declared full support for the protesters and called for a countrywide general strike. Reuters reported on Jan. 14 that armed Kurdish separatists had sought to cross the border into Iran from Iraq. Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization reportedly tipped off Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Kurdish fighters’ movements.

Of particular concern for Ankara is that these historically feuding and weak entities are now supported by the Iranian arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which fought the Turkish army from 1984 until it renounced violence against Turkey last July. Several thousand PKK fighters positioned along the Iran-Iraq border where the rebel leadership is headquartered could potentially join the fight in Iran, according to Riza Talebi, an Iranian academic who focuses on Iran-Turkey relations at the University of Leipzig. Some most likely already have.

One of the main challenges facing both governments is the rugged mountainous terrain where the Kurdish insurgents are based. And any military collaboration between the Iranian regime and Turkish forces against Iran’s Kurds could trigger street protests inside Turkey’s Kurdish-majority provinces, Talebi told Al-Monitor. 

Moreover, Israel’s first-ever direct offensive against Iran in July 2025 — taking down key regime figures, including most of its nuclear scientists — exposed the extent of Israeli penetration of Iranian officialdom. “Thus, it would not be inconceivable that Israel has similarly co-opted ethnic dissidents, notably among the Kurds and the Azeris, creating further vulnerabilities for the regime,” Talebi added. 

Arash Azizi, an Iranian-American academic and author of the recently published “What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom,” agrees. “In worst-case scenarios, Kurdish parties — or at least some of them — might be tempted to wage a civil conflict in parts of Iran, potentially backed by Israel, to help bring down the regime or further destabilize it,” Azizi told Al-Monitor.  

A shared antagonism for Israel is among the key features currently binding Turkey’s Islamist government and Iran. 

Economic ties between the two countries are another factor, overshadowed as they are by Western sanctions and now by Trump’s threats to impose a 25% tariff on any country doing business with Iran. According to official Turkish figures, Turkey exported $2.7 billion worth of goods to Iran and imported $2.3 billion worth in return in the first 11 months of 2025, with Iranian natural gas accounting for the bulk. Erdogan’s government has a controversial record of helping Iran dodge sanctions — Turkish state lender Halkbank was indicted in 2019 by a federal court in New York after being found guilty of secretly moving billions of dollars in oil revenue on Iran’s behalf. 

To the uninitiated, the convergence may seem strange. After all, Turkey — a key NATO ally — and Iran are historic rivals. Their respective bids for regional hegemony have been marked by centuries of warfare that peaked in the 1514 battle of Chaldiran in western Azerbaijan, which is now part of Iran. The Ottoman Turks prevailed over the Safavid Persians. 

The last big war waged between the Ottomans and the Persian Qajar dynasty lasted from 1821 to 1823. The Treaty of Erzurum signed on July 29, 1823, however, put a definitive end to direct military conflict between the sides. 

'Hedgehog dilemma'

Turkey’s rigidly pro-secular military, which long ran the country behind the scenes and spearheaded a brief strategic alliance with Israel in the mid-1990s, was touted as an antidote to Iran's efforts to export its Islamic Revolution. Thousands of secular Iranians fled to Turkey. An estimated 500,000 Iranians are believed to reside in Turkey, many of them dual nationals.

Erdogan’s rise to power in 2002 and his subsequent defanging of the military might have spelled a shift. After all, Turkey’s early generations of Islamists led by Erdogan’s mentor and former prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, who was ousted in a bloodless coup in 1997, were fascinated by Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the promise it held for their own ambitions. 

But these were offset by the Shiite-Sunni divide that the majority-Shiite Iran and majority-Sunni Turkey cynically exploited long before Erdogan’s reign, as they sparred over Azerbaijan and the Central Asian Muslim states that became independent with the fall of the Soviet Union. This divide became pronouncedly more sectarian during the Syrian conflict in which Iran backed Alawite dictator Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey supported the Sunni rebels who eventually prevailed.

Yet throughout the nearly 14-year war, the region’s largest non-Arab powers deemed it in their interests to compartmentalize their differences and cooperate under the “Astana” deconfliction scheme with Russia rather than let them escalate. Talebi likens Turkish-Iranian relations to 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s “hedgehog dilemma” whereby hedgehogs typically seek proximity in cold weather while making sure to remain apart so as to avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. 

Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel upended that compact spectacularly — in Turkey’s favor. Israel’s response saw Iran lose its foothold in Syria and badly weakened elsewhere, as the Jewish state unleashed its fury against Iranian proxies across the region, decapitating the top leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon and culminating in the 12-day war with Iran in June 2025. “The axis of resistance around Iran, its shield of protection collapsed. Its proxies were battered or disappeared, creating a vacuum into which Turkey has stepped in a big way, making it the country that benefited the most from Israel’s actions,” said Karabekir Akkoyunlu, a Turkish scholar of Iranian affairs. “But that opportunity has come with risks,” Akkoyunlu told Al-Monitor. And the risks are prevailing. “Turkey has welcomed moving into the space vacated by Iran, but that doesn’t mean that Turkey wants a completely down and weakened Iran,” the scholar noted. 

No kings

A major question is who would replace the regime if it were overthrown.

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Iranian shah who died in exile, would love to be the one. Long derided as a poseur who has few ties with or support in the country he aspires to rule over, Pahlavi’s name is being chanted by a surprising number of protesters. “What it means is that they have shed their parents’ squeamishness about the Pahlavi dynasty,” Christopher de Bellaigue, a UK-based historian who has authored numerous books on modern Iran, told Al-Monitor. “He is the most convenient and most recognized figurehead available to get behind,” added Bellaigue.

While a return of the monarchy seems far-fetched, even the slightest possibility is deeply unsettling for Ankara. “The worst scenario for Turkey would be a crown prince backed by Israelis as a neighbor,” a Turkish expert on Iran speaking on background told Al-Monitor. “What Turkey is hoping for is a reformed government in Iran and for the streets to cool down,” the expert said.

Iran’s current president, Masoud Pezeshkian, cuts an alluring figure in those calculations. Since being elected in 2024, the 71-year-old half-Kurdish half-Azeri — who speaks both languages fluently — has been filling government positions with ethnic Turks who regard Turkey with sympathy, Talebi said. He could lead the country through a soft transition to better relations with the West without threatening Turkey’s interests. But Iran’s prevailing turmoil and unpredictability render such outcomes fanciful at best.