The Turkey's Divergent Role in Iran-Azerbaijan Relations

The enormous changes in international system after the Soviet Union collapse led to a power vacuum and unprecedented competition of regional and trans-regional powers in central Asia and Caucasus. As a result of these phenomena, any actions by regional and international powers were viewed in the context of regional rivalries. Therefore, this fact brought several important obstacles in front of the expansion of Iran-Azerbaijan relations and at the same time led to reactions of other regional powers, including Turkey. The main goal of this article is to explain how Turkey's regional policy affected Iran-Azerbaijan relations. Turkey has had some common identity and mutual interest with Azerbaijan and so on its foreign policy towards this country put some important limitations in Iran-Azerbaijan relations. At the same time, Turkey's policy towards Iran brought more obstacles to Iran goal of expansion in its relations with Azerbaijan. This condition seems to continue because of the increase in Turkey-Azerbaijan relations. Therefore, there will be no important improvement in the coming years. This assumption will be studied from constructive points of view.