IRAN PROTESTS TO TURKEY OVER POEM RECITED BY ERDOGAN IN AZERBAIJAN

Sat 12 December 2020:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Turkey’s ambassador over what it said was “meddlesome” remarks by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Azerbaijan on Thursday.

Erdogan was in the Azeri capital Baku to review a military parade marking Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia in a war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave that ended last month.

The Turkish president recited an Azeri-Iranian poem about the division of Azerbaijan’s territory between Russia and Iran in the 19th century. Tehran appeared concerned his remarks could fan separatism among Iran’s Azeri minority.

Cumhurbaşkanımız @RTErdogan: Azerbaycan’ın 44 gün süren destansı mücadelesinde şehit düşen yiğitlere Cenab-ı Allah’tan rahmet, gazilerimize acil şifalar diliyorum. #Azerbaijan #Azərbaycan #AzerbaycanTurkiye #AzerbaycanZaferi #Türkiye #Turkey #KarabakhisAzerbaijan #TürkünZaferi pic.twitter.com/J8FvLn2Hch

— AK KADIN YUMURTALIK 🇹🇷 (@Akkadinyumrtalk) December 10, 2020

“The Turkish ambassador was informed that the era of territorial claims and expansionist empires is over,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on its website on Friday.

“Iran does not allow anyone to meddle in its territorial integrity.”

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted earlier: “President Erdogan was not informed that what he ill-recited in Baku refers to the forcible separation of areas … from [the] Iranian motherland.”

“NO ONE can talk about OUR beloved Azerbaijan,” Zarif said, referring to the northwest region of Iran where many of its ethnic Azeris live.

Pres. Erdogan was not informed that what he ill-recited in Baku refers to the forcible separation of areas north of Aras from Iranian motherland

Didn’t he realize that he was undermining the sovereignty of the Republic of Azerbaijan?

NO ONE can talk about OUR beloved Azerbaijan

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) December 11, 2020

According to Iran’s ISNA news agency, the poem recited is “one of the separatist symbols of pan-Turkism”.

It said the verses point to Aras and “complains of the distance between Azeri-speaking people on the two sides of the river”.

The poem includes the lines: “They separated the Aras River and filled it with rocks and rods. I will not be separated from you. They have separated us forcibly.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said it had summoned Turkey’s ambassador in Tehran over Erdogan’s “interventionist and unacceptable remarks”, and demanded an “immediate explanation”.