Erdogan says Tehran ‘acting dishonestly’ by demanding new summit venue

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused Iran of acting dishonestly by suggesting Damascus or Baghdad as the venue for next week’s summit to discuss the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

The meeting was set to take place in Istanbul, but Iranian officials have recently expressed concern over the pressure that Turkey continues to exert on Syria, a key Iranian ally.

At a news conference in Ankara, Erdogan referred to Tehran’s proposal as a “waste of time,” saying that Iran knows the meeting’s participants — representatives of the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany — would never go to Syria or Iraq in order to discuss the issues at hand.

The Iranian newspaper Etemaad reported on Thursday that Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, stated that “given Turkey’s unprincipled policies, it is not beneficial for the upcoming negotiations… to be held in Istanbul.” He added that “Iranian lawmakers have many times said that negotiations need to take place in another spot, and in a country that is a friend of Iran’s.”

Erdogan has been walking a fine line between his friendship with Iran and his increasingly hardline position against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Assad regime’s ongoing violent crackdown on the Syrian opposition has left more than 10,000 people dead.

Last week Erdogan visited Tehran for two days in which he met with several senior Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the summit to discuss the Iranian nuclear program would be held on April 13-14 in Istanbul.

The latest rift between Iran and Turkey makes it uncertain where, when and if the scheduled talks will take place.