TEHRAN, Iran — For the past 35 years, political and economic development in Iran and Turkey have experienced a virtually inverse relationship. As one country has seen improvement, the other has gone into decline. In the 1980s, Turgut Ozal developed Turkey’s economy while Iran was fighting a devastating eight-year war with Iraq. Then, with the end of Ozal's era, successive unstable administrations came to dominate Turkish politics during the 1990s. Meanwhile, Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami improved Iran’s economy. The Iranian inflation rate, which topped 29% in 1998, had dropped to 13% by 2005.
Similarly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eight-year rule, which began in 2005, coincided with the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) rise to power in Turkey. Incumbent Turkish President and former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lowered Turkey’s inflation rate from 70% in 2001 to 7.4% in 2013. During the same period, under Ahmadinejad, Iran’s inflation inversely experienced an increase to 43%.
