January 23, 2025
Nasser Kandil
• Throughout history, Arabs, Persians, and Turks have alternated in playing imperial roles within the region and the world. Long before the Common Era, the Persians established an empire that stretched from the Levant to the depths of Central Asia, reaching the borders of Russia and China. Meanwhile, Pharaonic Egypt extended its influence across eastern Africa, both northward and southward, and into the Levant, particularly Palestine. Egypt was a major contributor to human civilisation, rivaling the stature of Roman achievements.
With the advent of Islam, Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant became imperial players for several centuries, only to have their position inherited by the Turks through the Ottoman Empire under the banner of the Islamic Caliphate.
• Since World War I and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Arabs, Turks, and Persians have entered intense competition for Western favour and patronage. This rivalry manifested as Arab-Turkish, Arab-Persian, and Turkish-Persian disputes. The Shah’s regime became the undisputed Western proxy in the Gulf, the Arab Revolt unfolded under British sponsorship, and Ataturk’s Turkey emerged as a model of Western modernisation within the Islamic world.
Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Tehran has tirelessly sought to persuade Arabs and Turks that a tripartite cooperation among Arabs, Turks, and Persians would render them independent of Western, particularly American, dominance. Iran contends that such cooperation among the tripartite requires abandoning two illusions and embracing a singular reality – an absolute truth. The first illusion is sectarian conflict, which is nothing more than a mirage. The second is trust in the West, which exploits all parties and seeks to prevent any one of them from emerging strong. The shared truth is that the three powers are the main players in West Asia and could together create a regional system that ensures stability – not necessarily as an adversary to the West but as an equal. Additionally, Palestine stands as a common cause for all three.
However, the American invasion of Iraq disrupted these prospects. The war was framed as upsetting sectarian balance, portraying a Shia victory over Sunnis. This narrative was later extended to Turkey and Arab states, particularly Egypt and the Gulf, during the war on Syria, which was presented as a Sunni uprising to reclaim rights from the so-called Shia crescent. This framing effectively thwarted any calls for unity and cooperation.
• Fifteen years later, Turkey’s resolution of the Syrian conflict has paradoxically placed it in confrontation with Arab states, especially the Gulf and Egypt. This is not solely due to the ideological model Turkey carried into Syria with American and European blessings and Israeli approval but also because Turkey’s expanded influence within the Arab sphere revived fears of neo-Ottomanism, championed by certain Turkish leaders.
The Gulf’s recent engagement in Lebanon and its tacit acceptance of Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon’s balance of power may be viewed as groundwork for opening collaboration with Iran. This positions the Gulf states to compete with Turkey in Syria, using Lebanon as a foothold. Turkey’s attempt to remove Iran from Syria – a concession to the U.S. and Israel in exchange for securing exclusive control over the Syrian file – failed to deliver the desired outcomes. It neither led to the lifting of Western sanctions nor succeeded in curbing embarrassing Israeli provocations within Syrian territories. Moreover, the unresolved Kurdish issue remains a daily challenge for Turkey.
• Once again, the West manipulates the disputes among the Turkish, Arab, and Iranian trio, breaking its promises and exploiting their rivalries to justify its own failures to honour commitments. It is imperative to recognise that sectarian conflicts are an illusion, trust in the West is a mirage, and mutual cooperation is a strategic necessity. The initial point of convergence must be Palestine, with a pragmatic goal such as establishing a Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967. This goal requires the collective efforts of Turkey, the Gulf, Egypt, Iran, and resistance forces – not through an aligned vision, but by finding intersections where diverse perspectives converge and collaborate.
From this foundation, cooperation can extend toward establishing a stable governance model in Syria that accommodates all components of its population, ensures regional security, and paves the way for free elections within months. The timing is opportune, given America’s retreat across the Atlantic and Israel’s setbacks, as its strategic project – centered on occupation, displacement, and crushing resistance forces, has suffered major blows, pushing it toward an existential crisis.
Despite Israel’s painful strikes against resistance forces, its position is weakening. The question remains: will reason and mutual interests prevail over petty calculations, stubbornness, and zero-sum battles?
• A Turkish-Iranian-Saudi-Egyptian understanding could resolve crises in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan. Such an alliance would create a market of hundreds of millions of consumers and a financial, oil, and industrial capacity rivaling the European Union. As the late Anis al-Naqqash envisioned in his plan for a Levantine confederation, prioritising shared causes over identity conflicts remains the key to unlocking the region’s potential.
