Ankara and Tehran are trying to keep the lid on tensions despite President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s outburst in March, when he accused Iran of trying to dominate the Middle East, which he said was “intolerable” and “had to be stopped.” But this has not prevented tensions spilling over into open warfare between the official and pro-government media outlets on both sides.
Fueling this warfare is the fact that Turkey and Iran remain seriously at odds over Syria, where they back opposite sides and have sectarian-based disagreements over other regional crises, from Iraq to Yemen, along the Sunni-Shiite fault line.
