Turkey’s commitment to peaceful democratic transitions in the Arab world has alienated it from its Syrian ally, Bashar al-Assad – with whose repressive practices both Iran and Hezbollah are fully complicit – and is now driving Iran and Turkey even further apart. Iran is working to ensure that free elections open the way to truly Islamic regimes in the Arab world, while Turkey assumes that its own political brand, a synthesis of Islam and democracy with secular values, should ultimately prevail.