Erdoğan’s second home not in good shape

During his visit to Tehran in January, then-Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, “Iran feels like his second home.” Turkey’s political Islam, through the ranks of which Mr. Erdoğan proudly comes from, has had a love-envy-hate relationship with Shia Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution: envy, because the Iranians, not the Turks, built an Islamic state; love, because it is an Islamic state, but; hate, because it is a Shia Islamic state.  

The opposite is also true. Iranians have rarely hidden their love-hate (not envy) relationship with the Turks. Last November, Iran’s ambassador to Ankara, Alireza Bigdeli, said “just like Imam Khomeini did it in Iran, the Justice and Development Party [AKP] have paved the way for the advancement of Islam in Turkey.” Privately, the Iranians probably think the Turkish Islamists can be useful but, after all, they are a bunch of corrupt Muslims who dress up like western clowns.  

The Islamic state of Iran has always been a source of fear for secular Turks because of its systematic efforts to export its regime to and weaken the secular regime in Turkey. But for Islamist Turks, Iran has denoted religious purity both as a nation and governance; a country where, thanks to the Islamic rule, all Quranic evil tends to disappear and all Quranic good proudly prevails.

Iran is home to girls with chastity. Adultery and theft are punished like in the early years of Islam. Iran is so pure; it is entirely free of even a drop of alcohol or a piece of pork meat. And, according to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “there is not a single gay in Iran.”  

There are, of course, de jure checks to make sure the enviable religious purity remains intact. In Iran, Article IV...