“A limited strike is an illusion. Any military action by the US, from any origin and at any level, will be regarded as the start of a war, and the response will be immediate, all-out, and unprecedented, targeting the heart of Tel Aviv and all those who support the aggressor," said Ali Shamkhani, an advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Wednesday.
Iranians’ chants against the Islamic Republic—muted for now by brute force—are viewed in Turkey not as a struggle for freedom but as a geopolitical risk from migration and militancy.
Iran, in this view, is a buffer—a state whose continued cohesion has helped secure Turkey’s eastern borders for decades, whatever its internal circumstances.
The prospect of that buffer weakening alarms Ankara far more than the nature of the demands driving Iran’s unrest.
That approach was underscored on Thursday, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian in a phone call that Turkey opposed any foreign intervention in Iran and valued peace and stability in the country.
The message echoed a broader pattern in Ankara’s response: caution, restraint, and a clear preference for preserving the status quo over endorsing political change.
Since the protests began, Turkish officials have framed developments in Iran as the erosion of central authority driven by outside forces.
Senior figures, including Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, have described the unrest as a “scripted scenario” and warned against what they portray as foreign efforts to push the region toward chaos.
At the core of this stance lies a long-standing fear that instability in Iran could open space for militant groups along Turkey’s eastern and southern frontiers, even as a peace process with Kurdish militants has made historic progress after decades of combat.
The Syrian precedent
This security-first reading of events reflects a fear expressed from corners of Turkey’s media and academic establishment that if the Islamic Republic were to collapse, Turkey could be next.
As a result, Iran’s protests are often explained away through the language of conspiracy—foreign plots rather than expressions of domestic discontent—making meaningful democratic solidarity between the two societies more difficult at a moment of profound crisis.
Years of economic strain at home and unresolved entanglements in Syria have further heightened Ankara’s sensitivity to instability beyond its borders.
Few Turkish policymakers are eager to risk a scenario that could trigger new refugee flows after the epic out-migration of Syrians fleeing that country's civil war strained Turkey's domestic cohesion and stoked bitter arguments with Europe.
Support for armed insurgents in that war did not render the hosting of millions of Syrian people on Turkish soil any easier, and Turkey has shown no such fondness for any anti-state elements in Iran.
Ankara’s caution has also been shaped by its regional calculations since the war in Gaza. Turkish officials are acutely wary of being seen as aligned with Israel, particularly as Israeli leaders have spoken openly in favor of regime change in Iran.
In Ankara’s reading, Western rhetoric about democracy masks a broader realignment that would ultimately strengthen Israel’s regional position at Turkey’s expense. Weakening Iran, they fear, could expand Israeli influence in ways that leave Turkey strategically exposed.
Some Turkish analysts have warned in recent days that the government should be less concerned about Iran losing a conventional conflict than about what might follow. A weakened Iranian state, they argue, could rely on proxy forces and non-state actors to drag the region into a prolonged, asymmetric struggle.
Fear of what may come next
From this perspective, preventing war in Iran is a strategic necessity. A collapse of authority inside Iran could empower Kurdish groups such as the PKK or its Iranian affiliate, PJAK, and test Turkey’s security more severely than the Syrian civil war ever did.
The fragmentation of Syria remains a vivid reference point: a power vacuum, the emergence of armed enclaves, and a long-term security burden that Ankara is still struggling to manage.
These fears help explain why the refrain “if Iran falls, Turkey is next” has gained traction in Turkish media.
Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, has largely aligned with the government’s cautious approach. Even media outlets critical of Erdoğan have, at times, reinforced narratives that external actors are driving the violence in Iran.
The relative absence of support from Turkey’s secular movements for protesters in Iran also reflects the limited reach of Iranian opposition groups in neighboring countries.
Turkish officials often say they would prefer an Iran that is more developed and better integrated into the international system. But the uncertainty surrounding Iran’s political trajectory—and the perceived costs of a turbulent transition—continue to outweigh that aspiration.
For now, Ankara’s overriding objective remains stability: not because it approves of Iran’s system, but because it fears what might come after it.
"We have 30 to 40,000 American troops stationed across eight or nine facilities in that region," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a congressional hearing on Wednesday. "All are within the reach of an array of thousands of Iranian one-way UAVs and Iranian short term ballistic missiles."
"We have to have enough force and power in the region just on a baseline to defend against that possibility that at some point, as a result of something, the Iranian regime decides to strike at our troop presence in the region, the President always reserves the pre-emptive defensive option," he added.
Rubio said the outlook for any transition following the rule of Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader remained unclear.
"I don't think anyone can give you a simple answer as to what happens next in Iran if the Supreme Leader and the regime were to fall, other than the hope that there would be some ability to have somebody within their systems that you could work towards a similar transition," he said.
"I would imagine it would be even far more complex than the one we're describing now, because you're talking about a regime that's in place for a very long time."
Former political prisoner and rights activist Hossein Ronaghi said the crackdown in Iran amounted to a crime against humanity, accusing the authorities of systematically killing protesters and attempting to conceal the scale of the crackdown.
“What happened in Iran is a crime against humanity,” Ronaghi said, adding that protesters seeking “the right to life and freedom” were killed, wounded, blinded, or subjected to amputations. He said others had disappeared or remained in detention awaiting harsh sentences.
Ronaghi said internet shutdowns were a deliberate effort to hide the truth.
“The government, through ignorance, despotism, and a policy of survival at any cost, brought the country to this point and set it ablaze. The pain of this mourning will become a fire that will destroy the foundations of despotism,” he added.
US Senator Lindsey Graham said President Donald Trump would deliver on his promise to support Iranian people.
“When Donald Trump promises you something, he will deliver. To the Iranian people, President Trump has your back,” Graham said in an interview with Fox News.
“I hope he can find a deal to end the bloodshed in Iran, but Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism,” he added.
"I think regimes, including that one in Iran, have learned that when you start shooting people in the head with snipers, it's effective," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a congressional hearing on Wednesday, estimating the death toll from Iran's crackdown on protestors this month was "in the thousands."
"I mean, it works, and they've done it, and it's horrifying," he added. "That regime is probably weaker than it has ever been, and the core problem they face, unlike the protests you saw in the past on some other topics, is that they don't have a way to address the core complaints of the protesters, which is that their economy is in collapse."
"The protests may have ebbed, but they will spark up again in the future, because this regime, unless they are willing to change and/or leave, have no way of addressing the legitimate and consistent complaints of the people of Iran who deserve better," Rubio said.
