A new blow to diplomatic relations between Turkey and Iran?
Geopolitics shows us repeatedly that the proverb that says “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” can become a reality in certain scenarios. “History is a ceaseless starting over”, said the Athenian historian Thucydides. A new beginning in which many times the lessons learned from the past are not taken into account. It is four months since Masoud Molavi Vardanjani, an Iranian dissident known for criticizing the leaders and politicians of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was murdered in Istanbul. Tehran could be behind the man's death, two senior Turkish officials confirmed to Reuters news agency on Saturday.
“Two intelligence officers from the Iranian consulate in Turkey instigated the murder of Masoud Molavi Vardanjani,” Reuters said in its publication. The murder of Masoud Molavi Vardanjani took place on 14 November 2019. However, the results of the investigations have begun to bear fruit only a few weeks ago. A police report on the murder - published about a fortnight ago - said Vardanjani had an “unusual profile”. The same report explains that Vardanjani worked in the cyber security department of the Iranian Ministry of Defence and that he had become critical of the regime in his country.
The Turkish authorities have indicated that Vardanjani had posted a message on social networks targeting Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard in August, three months before he was killed. “I will eradicate the corrupt leaders of the mafia,” he said in his posting. “Pray that they don't kill me before I do this,” he added. However, Reuters news agency said it was unable to confirm Vardanjani's position in the Iranian defence ministry or his posts on social networks. A week after Vardanjani was killed, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described his death as “another tragic example in a long series of alleged assassination attempts on Iranian dissidents supported by Iran”.
An Istanbul police spokesman has confirmed that the investigation is continuing. Meanwhile, the country's authorities have not publicly accused the Iranian government of being involved in this assassination. The alleged perpetrator of the crime and several suspects, including Turkish and Iranian nationals arrested in the weeks following the murder, have told authorities that they acted on the orders of two intelligence agents from the Iranian consulate. “It was reflected in the testimonies of the detained suspects that these two Iranians, who had diplomatic passports, had given the order for the killing,” said a senior Turkish official after identifying the two men by their names and initials. Another official Turkish source has also insisted that the evidence including the suspects' statements suggested that “the Iranians played an important role in both instigating and coordinating” the killing.
This new allegation may jeopardize diplomatic relations between Turkey and Iran. After rapprochement with the EU during his first years in power, Erdogan turned his foreign policy around by establishing alliances with regimes such as Iran. In this sense, Ankara and Tehran have a common goal and that is the Kurdish question. “Turkey continues to focus on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but for Iran, which has a Kurdish community of more than 6.5 million people concentrated mainly in four provinces bordering Turkey, Iraq and Turkmenistan, the big red line is the federalisation of Syria,” explained Nicolás de Pedro, Irene Martínez and Melike Janine Sökmen, researchers at CIDOB.
Relations between Turkey and Iran have been put to the test by the civil war in Syria, where Ankara supports the rebels and Iran supports the government of Bashar Al Assad. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), in recent days several militias financed by Iran have established themselves in the de-escalation zone of Idlib.
Vardanjani was on the radar of the Iranian authorities for defying a warning from the Guardians of the Revolution not to cooperate with Turkish companies on several drone development projects. Two Iranian security force spokesmen have indicated that he had also approached the United States and European states to work for them, although Reuters was unable to corroborate this information. In addition, these same sources have insisted that Vardanjani had posted documents online that he had hacked into or obtained from contacts in Iran. Also, before he was killed, Vardanjani had ignored requests to contact the Iranian embassy in Ankara, and met with U.S. representatives and an Israeli diplomat, they said.
A joint investigation by Istanbul police and Turkish intelligence reviewed more than 320 hours of footage, searched 49 premises and spoke to 185 people, according to a police report available to Reuters news agency. Video footage broadcast on Turkish television after Vardanjani's murder showed a gunman passing in front of two other men as they walked through the Sisli neighbourhood in central Istanbul at 10pm on 14 November last year. The Turkish police authorities have said that the colleague who was walking with Vardanjani had befriended him and had been reporting his actions to the Iranian authorities.
The morning before the murder, the comrade, who according to the police report and Turkish officials was called Ali Esfanjani, went to the Iranian consulate. He later met with the perpetrator of the crime to discuss the details of the operation, according to the Turkish police. The murder of Vardanjani could be a clear example of Iran's repression of dissent beyond its borders. This could endanger diplomatic relations between Ankara and Tehran, two of the region's major powers.