Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Featured
Saudi's King Salman in Turkey signals thaw in Ankara-Riyadh Tensions

Saudi’s King Salman in Turkey signals thaw in Ankara-Riyadh Tensions

Juan Cole 04/12/2016

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman is visiting Turkey today, after his trip to Egypt this past weekend (I wrote about that at The Nation).

There are things that have driven Saudi Arabia and Turkey apart, and things that have brought them together again. The tensions center on the Egyptian officer corp’s overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi in summer of 2013.

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan is a big supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his pro-Muslim Justice and Development Party struggled against Turkey’s own nationalist officer corps, which had regularly made coups against democratically elected governments in the second half of the twentieth century. He has demanded that Morsi be released and that the death sentence hanging over his head be commuted.

In contrast, Saudi Arabia strongly supported the overthrow of Morsi, and likely encouraged the Egyptian officers to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, which Riyadh views as populist and dangerous to regional stability (even blaming al-Qaeda on the Brotherhood).

The animus against the Brotherhood, however, was mainly carried by the late King Abdullah. His successor in Riyadh, King Salman, is said to have moderated this Saudi anti-Brotherhood stance. Salman needs the (Sunni) Brotherhood in Yemen, for instance, against the Zaidi Shiite group, the Houthis, against whom the Saudis are fighting a brutal air war. Turkey has given verbal and perhaps some logistical support to the Saudi struggle in Yemen against the Houthis, and Erdogan has denounced Iranian support for the Houthis. (Typically outsiders over-estimate the significance of Iranian support for the Houthis, who are a local Yemen force and who probably have not in fact gotten that much aid from Iran). Iran has been upset by the charges, but has striven to maintain good trade and diplomatic relations with Turkey.

Moreover, many of the remnants of the Free Syrian Army fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad are actually Muslim Brotherhood, and are allied with the more hard line fundamentalist Salafi groups that Salman supports. That is, King Salman appears to be more afraid of Iran than he is of the populist movements that overthrew dictators in the region, whereas with his predecessor the emphases were reversed.

Syria is what Saudi Arabia and Turkey most have in common at the moment. Both want to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan had tried to cultivate good relations with Bashar and even used to vacation with him, but al-Assad’s massacre of small town and rural Sunni fundamentalists was unacceptable to Erdogan (they resemble his own constituency in Turkey).

But while Saudi Arabia under Salman views Iran as a full-blown enemy and stirrer of instability in the region, Turkey has correct relations with Iran, despite tensions over Syria and Yemen. Turkey does $10 bn a year in trade with Iran and is aiming for $30 bn. Turkey does about $9 bn. in trade with Saudi Arabia annually. So economically, the two countries are equally valuable to Turkey and Iran even has a slight edge.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have likely lost the Syrian Civil War, now that the Russian Federation has intervened. They will want, however, to get the best settlement possible. They want their clients, the fundamentalist militias fighting against the regime, to have a place at the peace negotiations and in the resulting government. They want al-Assad gone. And they want to reduce Iranian influence in Syria. These considerations account for warming ties between the two.

——

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Ruptly TV: “Turkey: Saudi King Salman welcomed by Erdogan ahead of Syria talks”

Filed Under: Featured, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Antisemitism Awareness Act – Protecting Jews from What?
  • When Politics Leaves Reality Behind
  • Trump, the Suez Canal, and the end of Eisenhower's World Order
  • The Real Evil Empire May Surprise You
  • American Psycho: Trump's Delusional Crusade Transforms America into a Pariah State

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved