By combining the space-time diversity technique and iterative turbo codes, space-time turbo codes(STTCS) are able to provide powerful error correction capability. However, the multi-path transmission and iterative decoding structure of STTCS make the decoder very complex. In this paper, we propose a low complexity decoder, which can be used to decode STTCS as well as general iterative codes such as turbo codes. The efficient implementation of the backward recursion and the log-likelihood ratio(LLR) update in the proposed algorithm improves the computational efficiency. In addition, if we approximate the calculation of the joint LLR by using the approximate ratio(AR) algorithm, the computational complexity can be reduced even further. A complexity analysis and computer simulations over the Rayleigh fading channel show that the proposed algorithm necessitates less than 40% of the additions required by the conventional Max-Log-MAP algorithm, while providing the same overall performance.