# Turkey and a safe zone in Iran

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Turkey and a safe zone in Iran," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/turkey-and-a-safe-zone-in-iran/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's response to the Turkish president's suggestion that, in the event of an attack on Iran, the Turkish army would establish a safe zone inside Iranian territory — that Ankara would love nothing more, having previously taken Iraqi, Cypriot and Syrian territory, and that pan-Turkism is a subject most people are unaware of.*

- **The proposal:** A Turkish-established safe zone inside Iran in the event of an attack
- **Kiriakou's reading:** An opportunity to take Iranian territory
- **Precedents he cites:** Iraqi, Cypriot and Syrian territory
- **His term for the government:** Neo-Ottoman
- **The wider subject:** Pan-Turkism

**Turkey and a safe zone in Iran** is an exchange from January 2026, prompted by a viewer asking whether John Kiriakou had heard the Turkish president say that in the event of an attack on Iran the Turkish army would establish a safe zone inside Iranian territory.[1]

## The reading

Kiriakou did not treat the proposal as humanitarian. *"They would love that. They would love nothing more than to grab Iranian territory like they grabbed uh Iraqi territory and they grabbed Cypriot territory and they grabbed Syrian territory."*[1]

The list is the argument: three cases in which, on his account, a stated security rationale produced a lasting Turkish presence on someone else's land. Rall supplied the label — *"Pan-Turkism gone wild"* — and Kiriakou answered with his own: *"The neo-Ottoman government in Turkey is what it is."*[1][2]

## The subject nobody discusses

Rall's closing observation was that pan-Turkism is a topic they should get into properly at some point, because most people are not aware of it — although, he added, a lot of people who watch the show certainly are.[2] The conversation then turned to Barrett Brown, and the promised discussion did not take place in that episode.[2]

## Where it sits

The exchange belongs to the same January 2026 conversation in which Kiriakou reported [the calls from Arab capitals and from Israel asking Trump not to strike Iran](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-calls-not-to-attack-iran), and it supplies the regional argument those callers were making: that an attack would not stay bilateral, because too many neighbours have standing territorial appetites that a war would license.

## See also

- [The calls not to attack Iran](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-calls-not-to-attack-iran)
- [Kurds](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kurds)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. Is Trump Bidening Out? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou (2026-01-30), at 47:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDPkwpAs6Io&t=2876s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-30-deprogram-show-with-is-trump-bidening-out-deprogram-with-ted/
2. Is Trump Bidening Out? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou (2026-01-30), at 48:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDPkwpAs6Io&t=2908s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-30-deprogram-show-with-is-trump-bidening-out-deprogram-with-ted/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/turkey-and-a-safe-zone-in-iran/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt