Iran disrupts Syria’s confidence in Turkey, report says

PanARMENIAN.Net - A report prepared by the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM), an Ankara-based think tank established in 2009, has claimed that Iran has been influential in disrupting Syria's confidence in Turkey by disseminating anti-Turkish propaganda, saying Turkey is supposedly favoring the United States over Syria and providing arms to opposition groups that are trying to topple the Assad regime.

As Today’s Zaman reported, the ORSAM report, prepared by Middle East experts Veysel Ayhan, Oytun Orhan and Sercan Doğan, highlighted that instability in the region benefits Iran, which regards the developments in Syria as a threat to its own regime and tries to undo Turkey's influence over Bashar al-Assad to steer the developments in a way that befits Iran's own agenda.

Orhan ruled out the possibility of a Turkey-based arms dispatch to opposition forces by saying that such a move would be a violation of Turkish foreign policy, which has persistently been aimed at “luring the Syrian administration away from Iran, bringing it closer to Turkey.” But the balance was disrupted when the uprising in Syria began.

As the expert blamed Syria for relying on Iran's support rather than implementing reforms, he regarded the dissemination of anti-Turkish propaganda from Iranian media outlets a development “that cannot be a coincidence.”