Understanding Tajik Iranian relationship through domestic and international policies

Current authorities of Tajikistan accused the Islamic Renaissance Party of being responsible for an illegal military coup attempt in 2015, declaring them terrorists. Shortly after the incident, the head of the Islamic Party was invited to take part in the conference in Tehran. Using this act of Tehran, the authorities of Tajikistan accused Iran of supporting the Islamists in Tajikistan and the attempted coup. This act confirmed the old theory of the current authorities that Iran was involved in supporting the opposition during the civil war in Tajikistan in the 1900s. That has become a reference point for a severe cooling of relations between Tajikistan and Iran. The thesis argues that the domestic events within the country provoked the lack of confidence in Iran on the part of Tajikistan. Existing literature tells us little about the interconnectedness between domestic and foreign policies. Only a few pieces of literature addressed the topic by processing it through power dynamics and cultural analyses. As a result, the thesis has opted to expand on prior works and fill the current gap with the new approach. This study proposes a new historical division of the relations between Tajikistan and Iran. Therefore, the relations between domestic and foreign affairs are tested using the new division. By limiting the examining two domestic policies of Tajikistan: nation-building and political secularism, this thesis tries to answer the following question: how did the sum of the three (political secularism, nation-building, and confrontation between the ruling elite and the opposition) affect Tajikistan's foreign policy towards Iran? The study benefits from descriptive case studies and attempts to link the domestic politics of Tajikistan to its foreign relations and policies with Iran. The thesis concludes that two domestic policies were going in parallel with the foreign policy of Tajikistan, and often one interfered with the other.