Theere is more than a little trueth behind your ananlysis of Turkey stratigic thing with one additional item you might be overlooking. Iran has a huge hole in its demographics.
The eighth century leaders of Iran got a whole generation of Iranian men killed in their nineteen-eighties war with Iraq. Turkey will field vastly superior economic and military might for the whole period when the sons of the war generation would be coming of age.
In addition the secular Turks and the Prime Minister’s zelots never broke with each other. While the Iranians purged the well educated men of the Shah’s Government. Add the advantages from NATO membership and no country in the middle east comes close to the Turks at a time when countries may be looking for allies and the memories of the Ottoman empire are fading.
