President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday welcomed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Türkiye with an official ceremony for a one-day visit as the war in Gaza starts to enflame tensions across the Middle East.
Raisi and Erdoğan met in the capital, Ankara, for talks focused on the regional repercussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as steps to further deepen Turkish-Iranian ties, according to diplomatic sources.
The visit comes amid growing fears about the regional repercussions of the war in Gaza, which Israel launched in reprisal for the unprecedented Oct. 7 attacks launched by Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people in Israel.
In response, Israel has carried out a relentless offensive that has killed at least 25,490 people in Gaza, around 70% of them women, children and adolescents.
Raisi vowed on Monday that Israel "will certainly pay" for the killing in Syria of a senior general with the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The United States and Britain have stepped up joint airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen in response to their attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes.
Erdoğan condemned the first round of strikes early this month as "disproportionate," accusing Washington and London of trying to turn the Red Sea into a "bloodbath."
Israel has repeatedly targeted Tehran-linked figures in Syria and appears to be on the brink of launching a full-scale war against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Iran and Pakistan last week exchanged strikes against "militant" and "terrorist" targets and Türkiye itself has stepped up attacks against terrorist group PKK in Iraq and its Syrian offshoot YPG in Syria.
The rapid pace of the Middle East escalation forced Raisi to delay his visit to Ankara twice.
His planned talks in Ankara in early January were called off when twin blasts claimed by Daesh killed 89 people at the shrine of assassinated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
A trip he had planned for November was canceled because of conflicting schedules of diplomats involved in consultations over the Gaza war.
The turmoil engulfing the Middle East since Israel went to war on Oct. 7 has added a new layer of complexity to Türkiye's close but uneasy relationship with Iran.
Erdoğan considers Iran-backed Hamas as legitimately elected liberators and not the "terrorist" organization it has been proscribed as across the Western world.
He has compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler for attacks that have killed more than 25,000 people – mostly women and children – in Gaza.
Relentless Israeli attacks have also left much of the besieged Palestinian territory in ruins and starved of food.
Tensions also brew between the two regional powers in Syria – where they supported opposing camps in the country's civil war – and in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Karabakh region.
"Relations between Türkiye and Iran have always been complex and multidimensional," Istanbul's Centre for Iranian Studies Director Hakkı Uygur told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"Türkiye has always been able to manage it, to find a middle ground somehow. I think a similar thing will happen now."
Iran's official news agency, IRNA, said Raisi would lead a "high-ranking political and economic delegation."
Iran and Türkiye share a 535-kilometer (330-mile) border and a long history of both close economic relations and diplomatic feuds.
Türkiye backed opposition efforts to topple Iranian- and Russian-backed President Bashar Assad during Syria's civil war.
Iran grew increasingly anxious as Türkiye helped Azerbaijan beat back Armenian separatists from the Karabakh enclave in 2020 and then again last year.
Tehran fears that Baku's resurgence in the Caucasus region could feed the separatist ambitions of Iran's large ethnic Azerbaijani minority.
Analysts believe the Gaza war has helped put regional disputes on the back burner and force the two leaders to seek a joint approach to the Middle East.
"It is possible that Raisi and Erdoğan might declare some symbolic measure about Palestine out of the meeting," said Clemson University professor Arash Azizi.
"But I think their focus will be mostly on how to contain the conflict and make sure it doesn't expand further, something that Ankara and Tehran both want."
The two leaders previously discussed over the phone steps for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, with Erdoğan stressing the importance of the Muslim world adopting a "common stance against Israeli atrocities."
