Source: Turkish daily Today’s Zaman, March 16, 2013
At a reception in Ankara for diplomacy correspondents given by outgoing Iranian Ambassador Bahman Hosseinpour, the host pushed diplomatic courtesy aside completely and insulted his guests. The ambassador turned to a correspondent from Today’s Zaman, charging the newspaper of printing baseless news, and saying accusatorily, “We know where you get your directives from.”
The reason for this outgoing envoy’s anger was that this correspondent had asked about Iran’s policies regarding Syria. Rather than answering this innocent question, the ambassador decided to insult the press. Well-known journalist Metehan Demir made his own negative reaction to the situation clear.
In the meantime, in an interesting transformation from times in the past, circles that had only previously mentioned Iran alongside insults and had carried out loud campaigns of “Let’s keep Turkey from turning into Iran!” are now attacking the Zaman Group while at the same time apparently declaring undying love for Iran. The fact that it was not just marginal broadcasting organs like OdaTV, Aydınlık and others but also several hopeless Iran fans from the mainstream conservative segment who took advantage of the general situation was truly eye-opening.
According to the Iranian ambassador as well as some leftist and Islamist supporters, Tehran has absolutely no fault whatsoever in the Baathist massacres that have taken place in Syria. As they see it, Iran is innocent.The problem is not the bloody suppression of the Green Movement in Iran, nor is it the support given to the Baathist regime in Damascus, nor is it the seizing of every opportunity to oppose a Turkey which supports Tehran, even at the cost of turning its allies against it. No, the only issue at hand is the publication by Zaman and Today’s Zaman of certain pieces of news: the precipitous rise of Iranian companies operating in Turkey, intelligence training given to nurses sent to Turkey and espionage activities focused on getting Turkish officials to fall into prostitution trap.
As though if these pieces of news had not been published by Today’s Zaman, Iran would have had a shining image. As though Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu were not already now disappointed with Iran’s actions. When the fact is, just last week Erdoğan responded to some of my questions about Iran’s policies on Syria by saying “Iran’s stance has been, from the very beginning, ambivalent. For us to take this positive of a stance towards Iran on a global level, despite the effect it has on our relations with other countries, and then for Iran to remain just a spectator and even allow for the killing of so many Muslims to occur, is simply not acceptable.” In the meantime, there are many government officials who are just as disappointed as Erdoğan is now. And though many of these officials may not see the full truth, there are many who are surprised to see how Iran has used the Syria crisis to start a psychological war against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) using two completely opposite factions of society.
A piece of research on perceptions of Iran done in 20 Muslim countries including Turkey by the Zogby Research Firm places Iran’s real problem front and center for everyone to see. While the percentage from these 20 countries who viewed Iran positively in 2006 was 75 percent, today it is just 25 percent. Seven years ago, just 15 percent of Saudis thought that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, but this percentage has climbed rapidly to a full 78 percent who believe this is the case. Negative perceptions of Iran in Iraq and Lebanon are enormous. The issue is not limited simply to some articles printed in the Zaman newspaper; the percentage of those who view Iran negatively in Turkey today is at 77 percent. If you like, let’s take a country-by-country look at percentages of people who view Iranian policies in Syria negatively: Turkey, 67 percent; Pakistan, 68 percent; Azerbayjian, 71 percent; Egypt, 67 percent; Tunisia, 71 percent; Sudan, 72 percent; and Palestine, 76 percent.
The Iranian ambassador should carefully scrutinize this research and in the meantime, the Iranian regime ought to take a good long look in the mirror, not only for its own sake, but for the sake of the region.
