Abstract:

Seigniories, countries, empires founded in the Middle East constituted important civilizations throughout human history when the geopolitical situations of counties are taken into consideration. It seems that political, social and economic factors play an important role in the formation and development of civilizations. The geographical structure of the Middle East has a dominant effect in the formation and development of relations among civilizations. A variety of factors seem to be effective on economic relations between Safavid and Ottoman and between Iran and Turkey. Landforms constitute only one of the factors. Landforms have been a major influence in both the formation of the border and in the development of commercial relations between two countries. Because of the fact that the border region between Turkey and Iran is mountainous, it has led to the number of road and rail network to be less developed, and caused a shortage in the number of border crossings.  Climatic conditions are more hardened owing to the height in this region in which continental climate is widespread. Since the roughness of landforms affects the development of highway negatively, transportation network is poorly developed. This situation creates a negative impact on economic relations. Therefore, this study focuses on the effects of landforms on economic activities between Turkey and Iran.

Keywords: