Turkey on Saturday summoned the Iranian ambassador to Ankara over Iran’s “aggressive” reaction to the Turkish president’s recitation of a poem on a visit to Azerbaijan, which Tehran deemed to support a secession of Azeri ethnic parts of Iran.
The diplomatic spat between neighbors Iran and Turkey began earlier this week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who strongly backs Azerbaijan, read parts of a poem during a parade in the Caucasian country’s capital of Baku. The verses that Erdogan read included lines about how a border tore apart ancient Azeri, or Azerbaijani, lands “by force.”
In a statement Saturday, Turkey’s communications director Fahrettin Altun said Iranians had distorted the meaning of the poem “to fuel senseless tensions.”
The Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers spoke by telephone later on Saturday. A Turkish foreign ministry official said Mevlut Cavusoglu told his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, that public statements coming out of Tehran aimed at the Turkish leader were “baseless” and unacceptable, when other channels of communication were available between the two governments.
