Following the death of Iranian President Raisi in a helicopter crash, along with senior officials travelling with him, conspiracy theories have emerged. As usual, these theories, which seem to make sense at first but fall apart after a little information, have occupied the Turkish media for days. In an effort to consolidate their positions, all the associations of the lobbies that are in favour of fighting Iran at all times and for all reasons took their places on television, some of them trying to explain that Iran is hollow inside and some of them trying to explain what ‘Persian games’ could be involved.
We are a country rich in conspiracy theories
Almost everyone was sure that Raisi’s helicopter had crashed or been shot down as a result of sabotage. According to these theories, the helicopter was too old and should not have been assigned to a president. It should not have been flown when it was known that the weather conditions were very bad, and this was an unacceptable serious error or negligence. In short, there was something wrong, or rather there should have been something wrong. But no one has given a logical answer to the question ‘what could it be’. Everyone talks about an internal struggle and points to Khamenei as the Supreme Leader; but Raisi came to the presidency with his support.
When the conspiracy theories about the possibility of Raisi replacing Khamenei and the religious leader wanting to put his son in that position were too light, they talked about Khamenei’s desire to lead the country to a more radical rule. However, it was obvious that the religious leader could not do all this on his own and that the constitutional process would be set in motion immediately, and indeed the process was initiated by announcing the electoral calendar. Moreover, there is no explanation as to why the religious leader would not be able to carry out such a course of action together with Raisi. In the divide between reformists and conservatives that has existed in Iran for years, even the reformists that Khamenei does not like very much have repeatedly become president and served two terms of eight years each. None of them has been assassinated. Hassan Rouhani, who served for eight years until 2021, occasionally disagreed with the religious leader, especially on foreign policy issues. And he must have been on those so-called old helicopters many times until 2021, and so on.
Could it be true that the Iranian regime will become more radical and repressive from now on? Perhaps, but this is not necessarily directly related to the deaths of Raisi and his foreign minister, Abdullahiyan. Moreover, if the rumours about the regime becoming more radical and repressive are linked to domestic politics, they do not seem to be coherent either, because it was not lost on experienced reporters reporting from Iran on the day of the funeral that the restrictions on women’s dress, especially in metropolises like Tehran, were becoming less and less enforceable.
On the other hand, talk of the Iranian regime becoming more ‘radical’ in its foreign policy is also controversial. Since the Gaza incidents, when the Israeli government was highly provoked to draw the Iranian regime into a direct war, the Khamenei-Raisi duo reacted cautiously, realising that time was in their favour. They did not retaliate in a way that would pave the way for Israel to launch a war against Iran, confident that it would win over America directly. In this way, they have strengthened the hand of the American administration, which does not want a war, against Israel. What more radicalisation can there be?
Perhaps the only conceivable conspiracy theory would be that Israel could have done it. Israel/Netanyahu, who wants to draw Iran into a direct war because he thinks that time is working against him, could have claimed ownership of this job by bragging that they did it and even giving some details. In such a situation, Iran might have been left with no options such as moderation and retaliation without provoking a war. Israel, probably thinking that it might not have America and Europe on its side, did not go that way. Some senior Israeli officials, who asked not to be named, whispered to a prominent journalist that they had done it themselves because no one who ordered an attack on Israel would be spared, not even the head of state, but that did not sound very convincing at first. Perhaps, in addition to worrying that Israel might not be able to get the United States and Europe on its side, Israel was a little frightened by the weapons systems Iran used in its latest retaliation.
From Turkey’s perspective
If we look at the issue from a Turkey’s perspective, our first problem seems to be the ‘fight with Iran’ lobby. There is a lobby that always and in every situation wants to fight with Iran. In recent years, one of the main pillars of this lobby has been the political Islamist, Salafist and sectarian groups. According to them, Iran is always and everywhere working against Turkey, undermining Ankara’s initiatives in the Middle East, etc. There are even those who imply or openly say that Iran supports the PKK. Another element of the lobby is made up of people who often identify themselves as Kemalists. For this group, the fact that Iran is ruled by an Islamist regime is reason enough to distance themselves from Tehran.
Both groups criticise America and Israel a lot when they talk about other issues, but when it comes to Iran, I think they sometimes do not even realise that they are unwittingly taking a line that serves the interests of America and Israel. Since the establishment of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979), the US and Israel have been in favour of a secularist war between Turkey and Iran, because they believe that a war with Turkey will lead to the collapse of the anti-American and anti-Israeli Iranian regime, and in the final analysis this analysis does not seem to be wrong. However, we must consider the damage that such a comprehensive war would do to Turkey.
In the 1990s, America tried very hard to persuade almost every government in Ankara to go down this road, but fortunately it failed. State wisdom prevailed. For a while, the current government, due to its own foreign policy mistakes (Syria and Middle East policy), kept relations with Tehran very tense and made many anti-Iranian statements and initiatives, but in the end reason prevailed and Ankara completely cleaned up its problematic foreign policy. However, this anti-Iranian lobby has not disappeared and continues its fierce struggle to prevent good relations with Iran.
We have seen many examples of this in the latest incident. For example, what is the point of trying to explain that Iran is militarily hollow when it is clearly not true? Is it another way of suggesting that Iran should be attacked? Or what is the point of saying that Iran is always and everywhere working against Turkey? The examples given from Syria do not point to the fact that Iran is working against Turkey (which it may be), but primarily to the wrongness of Turkey’s Syrian policy.
For example, a fact that has been persistently overlooked in the commentaries on the accident in which Raisi lost his life, or that we have not sufficiently seen and dwelt on amidst the clouds of conspiracy theories that are many times larger than the area where the helicopter crashed, is that Iran has resolved its problems with Azerbaijan in a way that is close to Baku’s theses. As is well known, immediately after taking office, Raisi and Foreign Minister Abdullahiyan gave the impression that they would pursue a policy that would not accept the results of the Second Karabakh War, which ended in Azerbaijan’s victory in 1920.
They indirectly opposed the Zangezur corridor, saying that if Azerbaijan tried to open this corridor by force, the border between Iran and Armenia would disappear and they could not accept this. However, its talks with Moscow and its regional diplomacy have shown that there is no going back. Turkey’s shrewd quiet diplomacy also helped. They said nothing about Azerbaijan’s second military operation in the summer of 2023 and realised that the Zangezur corridor would not be opened by force. They are now trying to keep their relations with Azerbaijan alive. Indeed, Raisi returned to Tehran after inaugurating the Kiz Kalesi dam on the Azerbaijani border with Aliyev.
The author of these lines has repeatedly written/said that any attempt by Iran to touch Azerbaijan would be very costly for Tehran, but at the same time he is in favour of good relations with Iran because Turkey’s foreign policy interests lie in good relations with Iran. He is also pleased to see that the anti-Iran lobby, which belittles Iran, sometimes calling it a Persian empire, sometimes a Pharisee, and is constantly anti-Iranian, does not have much influence on foreign policy. The same satisfaction applies to the marginalisation of the Cold War nationalists, who constantly pump up Russophobia and Russophobic sentiments, both in social life and in political planning.
