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The Iranian government feels slighted after a conference by the Turkish president. Ambassadors from both countries receive roundtrip orders.
The Turkish president made a lyrical reference to the territory of Iran during a victory parade over the Barg Karabakh conflict in Azerbaijan.
Photo: Turkish Presidency (AP)
A poem read by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sparked a diplomatic crisis between Iran and Turkey. The poem “Aras, Aras” refers to the division of the Azeri settlement area along the Aras River, which today forms the border between Iran and Azerbaijan. Iran saw Erdogan’s conference as an attack on its sovereign rights over its northern provinces. The issue appeared on the front pages of Iranian newspapers on Saturday.
The border was established in the Treaty of Turkmanchai in 1828 after Persia was defeated by Russia. The area to the north of the river was assigned to Russia, the area to the south remained with Persia.
Telephone conversation between the foreign ministers
Out of resentment, the foreign ministers of the two states, Mohammed Jawad Sarif and Mevlüt Cavusoglu, phoned on Saturday night. According to a report by the Iranian state news agency IRNA, the differences were resolved. According to Sarif, Tehran wants to continue the good and cordial relationship between the Iranian leadership and Erdogan. According to IRNA, Cavusoglu said that Erdogan respected Iran’s territorial integrity and was not aware that the poem would generate sensitivities in Iran in this regard.
Erdogan had quoted the poem in his speech at Azerbaijan’s victory parade after the war against Armenia in Nagorno Karabakh on Thursday in Baku. In protest, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador to Tehran on Friday. Then Turkey reacted by summoning the Iranian ambassador for insulting Erdogan.
“Didn’t he (Erdogan) know that with this poem he was questioning the sovereignty of Iran?” Asked Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Sarif. “No one” can talk like this about the Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan and Ardabil. The three provinces are “an Iranian fortress and an inseparable part of the country.”
Erdogan’s spokesman, Fahrettin Altun, responded on Saturday: “We condemn the aggressive remarks about our president and our country under the pretext of a poem.” The Iranian government is trying to distort the context of the verses.
In Iran, there are more than eleven million Azeris in the eastern and western provinces of Azerbaijan, Ardabil in the northeast of the country, and Sanjan, Hamedan and Ghazvin in western and central Iran. In addition to Persian, they speak Azeri, which is similar to the Turkish language. Many Azeris in Iran are successful entrepreneurs and most of the country’s supermarkets are run by them. There are no serious discussions in Iran about the union of the Azeri provinces with the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Wounded in a shooting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region
A month after the end of the fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region in the South Caucasus, several soldiers were injured in a shootout there. Authorities in the area spoke of an attack by Azerbaijan on one of their military posts on Saturday. In the incident on Friday night, three armed forces of the Karabakh army were injured.
Azerbaijani media had previously reported a provocation by Karabakh soldiers in the southern part of the conflict region. One soldier was wounded on the Azerbaijani side.
On Saturday night (local time), the Armenian Defense Ministry spoke of a new attack against Azerbaijan near two villages. The Karabakh army is taking “appropriate measures”. No details were initially provided. This is a violation of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace agreement.
The two former Soviet republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia, agreed to this through Russia. Almost 2,000 Russian peacekeepers are in the region to control the ceasefire. According to the Interfax agency, high-ranking officials urged both parties to respect the ceasefire.
More than 4,500 dead
The last war between the two countries started on September 27 and lasted until November 9. Azerbaijan regained much of the area that had been lost in the early 1990s. In total, more than 4,600 people died on both sides, most of them soldiers. The conflict has raged for decades.
Azerbaijan lifted the state of war on Saturday night. The country had previously celebrated “victory” over Armenia with a large military parade. In contrast, many Armenians accuse their government of surrendering. During the protests, protesters repeatedly demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. He describes him as a “traitor”. According to police, more than 100 people were arrested in a demonstration on Friday.
Meanwhile, the identification of the dead continues. So far, more than 2,900 forensic examinations of fallen soldiers have been carried out, the Armenian Ministry of Health said. Accordingly, the soldiers’ DNA samples are compared with samples from relatives. Currently 541 bodies are being examined.
