Turkey summons Iran envoy over claims about president

By Zuhal Demirci

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey on Friday summoned the Iranian ambassador over unfounded allegations made about the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to diplomatic sources.

Ambassador Mohammad Farazmand, the ambassador in the capital Ankara, was summoned by Turkey’s Foreign Ministry to hear Ankara’s condemnation of unfounded allegations against Turkey and Erdogan as well as Iran’s summoning of Turkey’s envoy to Tehran, said the sources, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

Earlier Friday Iran summoned Turkey's ambassador to the country over a poem Erdogan read out during a ceremony in Azerbaijan.

Ambassador Derya Ors was summoned by Iran's deputy foreign minister to be told Tehran's "harsh condemnation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a written statement.

Ors was also told that Iran urgently expects an explanation, the statement added.

On Twitter, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed that the poem Erdogan read out targeted Iran's territorial integrity.

On Thursday, Erdogan attended a victory parade in Azerbaijan's capital Baku to mark the country's recent military success in liberating Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions from nearly 30 years of Armenian occupation.