Foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran towards Turkey during the Syrian Civil War (2011-24): A neo-classical realist framework

Carrying out the unveiled investigation into the foreign policy of Iran vis-à-vis Turkey during the Syrian Civil War (2011-2024) through the prism of Neo-Classical Realism (NCR), it specifically references the interaction of systemic pressures and intervening domestic variables. Traditional NCR models emphasize leadership characteristics, strategic culture, domestic institutions, and state-society relations; however, this investigation proposes the inclusion of sectarian identity as a fifth independent intervening variable, a factor of prime importance given the ideologically charged and identity-driven political order of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This dissertation places the Iran-Turkey rivalry within a larger historical, ideological, and geopolitical framework, establishing how the post-1979 Iranian revolutionary ethos and Shia identity groomed its regional behavior concerning Sunni-majority Turkey. The Syrian Civil War (2011-24) became the testbed for this relationship, laying bare the sectarian predication of Tehran's strategic decisions, including the nexus of transnational Shia militias and religious rationales. In contrast, Turkey and some principal Sunni Arab players such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE stood with the Syrian opposition, thus accelerating the larger sectarian polarization and geopolitical fragmentation of the region. Using a qualitative process tracing methodology triangulated with Persian, Turkish, and English primary and secondary sources, the study demonstrates the workings of ideological and institutionalized sectarianism upon the implementation of Iranian foreign policy. It argues that one should not consider sectarian identity as merely a subcategory of strategic culture but as a separate frame of analysis. Ultimately, this study extends the Neo-Classical Realism framework theoretically to accommodate identity-driven regional settings and to furnish a working hypothesis in outlining the sectarianized and ideologically filtered foreign policy underpinnings of Iran in the twenty-first century.