Turkey and Iran resolve ‘misunderstanding’ over Erdogan poem 

The Iranian Embassy in Ankara announced on Sunday that the “misunderstanding” with Turkey over the poem recited by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his visit to the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, has been resolved.

The embassy explained that Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, spoke on the phone to discuss the issue.

According to Anadolu, Zarif stressed the importance of maintaining friendly relations between Erdogan and senior Iranian officials. The minister hopes to develop relations between the two countries in terms of mutual trust.

Cavusoglu is said to have insisted that the Turkish leader “respects the national sovereignty of Iran and its territorial integrity.” He explained that when Erdogan recited the poem, he was referring to the city of Lachin and the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

The issue blew up on Saturday, when Ankara was reprimanded by Tehran for “offensive language” after Erdogan recited a poem that allegedly referred to Iran’s north-west provinces as belonging to Azerbaijan. Tehran believes that some verses of the poem promote separatist ideas among Iran’s Azeri minority.

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