ANKARA, Aug 18 (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call to pursue talks with Iran to de-escalate \u200ctensions between the two countries, and offered Ankara’s support for peace efforts, \u200cthe Turkish presidency said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Turkey, which has NATO’s second-largest army and borders Iran, has repeatedly called \u200bfor an end to the war. It has maintained close contact with the United States, Iran, and mediators such as Pakistan and Qatar, while also acting as an intermediary between the parties.<\/p>\n
“Erdogan stated that it is of great importance to make the utmost of \u200cdiplomacy regarding the tensions between \u2060Iran and the United States, that we hope the talks will continue, and that Turkey will continue to support peace efforts,” the \u2060presidency said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The call comes after a senior Iranian official told Reuters earlier on Monday that Iran would shift to a “fully offensive” military posture because efforts to negotiate \u200ba permanent \u200bend to the war have stalled, as \u200bWashington ruled out extending a temporary \u200cceasefire agreement.<\/p>\n
Progress towards a resumption of oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has also stalled.<\/p>\n
Turkey has criticised the U.S. and Israeli assault on Iran, while also condemning the Iranian attacks on Gulf states and calling for the re-opening of the strategic strait.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Turkey’s foreign minister discussed the strait’s re-opening and the continuation of \u200cthe ceasefire with his Iranian counterpart.<\/p>\n
The presidency added \u200bthat Erdogan and Trump also discussed bilateral ties, the \u200bwar in Gaza, and a \u200bdefence pact signed between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, adding that \u200cthe Turkish leader praised the accord as \u200ba sign of a “strong \u200bstance” for regional stability and security.<\/p>\n
It said Erdogan told Trump that Israel’s attacks on Palestinians had increased at a time when the second phase of \u200bTrump’s Gaza Peace Plan was \u200csupposed to come into effect.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to \u200ba request for comment on the call.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Additional reporting \u200bby Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANKARA, Aug 18 (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[38,34,24733,1176,24734],"class_list":["post-253562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkey","tag-turkish-president"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117113459998802230","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}