Diplomats summoned in Tehran and Ankara amid Turkey-Iran war of words

Latest tension highlights complicated relationship between neighbouring countries

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, left, and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara in December. EPA

A diplomatic falling out between Turkey and Iran escalated on Tuesday as Ankara summoned a senior Iranian diplomat – the latest development in a war of words between officials from the neighbouring countries.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires in Ankara after its ambassador in Tehran was called in for a meeting over comments made by the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to Al Jazeera Arabic. In an interview with the Qatari news channel last week, Mr Fidan angered the Iranian government by describing “the great risk” in what he said was Tehran’s policy of “conducting foreign policy through militias in regional countries”.

This kind of foreign policy approach “needs to be changed”, he said. “If you do not want a stone to be thrown at your window, you will not throw a stone at someone else's window,” he added, in an apparent reference to Iran suffering blowback from the network of militant groups it supports across the region.

In response to a question about Mr Fidan's remarks in his weekly press conference on Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei described comments from Turkish officials as “very unconstructive". The same day, Turkey's ambassador in Tehran, Hicabi Kırlangıc, was summoned for a meeting with Mahmoud Heydari, the Iranian Foreign Ministry's director general for the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.

"The common interests of the two countries and the sensitivity of regional conditions require avoiding wrongful comments and unreal analyses that could lead to differences and tensions in our bilateral relations," Mr Heydari said, according to Reuters.

Iranian politicians also responded with anger to Mr Fidan's remarks. Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Iran would not passively wait for a "stone to hit its window", but would instead dismantle "the house" of its opponents, the state-aligned Tehran Times newspaper reported.

In Ankara, Iran's charge d'affaires was called in for a meeting in which Turkish officials brought up "the claims of some Iranian officials against Turkey", the Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said in written remarks to journalists on Tuesday. “Recently, we have seen that Iranian officials have been voicing their criticisms of Turkey more in public,” Mr Keceli said.

“We believe that foreign policy issues should not be used as material for domestic politics in any case.” He did not publicly state specific comments from Tehran that Turkish officials wanted to address.

As two middle-tier powers with similar population sizes, Iran and Turkey have a complicated relationship. Governments of both countries acknowledge that they have differing opinions on some regional issues. In Syria, Turkey directly backed rebels against the former dictator Bashar Al Assad, while Iran, alongside Russia, was one of the Assad regime’s closest allies. Turkey is a close partner of Azerbaijan, while Tehran is wary of Baku’s close ties with Israel and Western nations.

At the same time, the neighbouring countries are strong economic partners: trade volume in 2023 was valued at $5.49 billion, according to figures published by Turkey’s Foreign Ministry. The majority of the trade is Turkish exports to Iran, including machinery and parts, plastics and various chemical products, agricultural products, and metal ores.

In both December 2024 and January 2025 Iranians were the second largest group of foreign purchasers of property in Turkey after Russians, according to official Turkish data. “We attach great value to our relations with Iran,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman’s statement continued. “Strengthening relations between Turkey and Iran is important to us.”

Iranian officials also sought to hedge their criticism by encouraging closer future ties. “We believe that Turkey is both aware of the importance of maintaining and promoting bilateral relations based on the national interests of the two nations, and is committed to it,” said Mr Bagheri, of Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

This is not the first time that diplomatic tensions have flared between Turkey and Iran. In 2016, officials in Ankara blamed the killing of four Turkish soldiers in northern Syria on an Iran-made drone. Iran has long accused Turkey of supporting extremist groups in the same country.