The defense minister held separate meetings with his Turkish, Lebanese and Pakistani counterparts on Thursday on the sidelines of a ceremony held in Istanbul to commemorate the centenary of “the Battle of Gallipoli.”
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Hassan Rouhani) to the ceremony in Istanbul,” Lieutenant General Hossein Dehqan told IRNA prior to the meetings, adding that as Rouhani was on a trip to Indonesia, he represented Iran in the event.
In the meetings, the officials discussed bilateral relations and regional and international developments and exchanged views on criminal actions by terrorist and “takfiri” groups as well as Israel’s moves.
A takfiri is a Muslim who accuses followers of other faiths and some Islamic sects of being unbelievers.
Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said in the meeting that Turkey and Iran are both “important and influential” countries in the region and expressed Ankara’s readiness to help expand bilateral cooperation between the two neighbors’ defense industries.
The Battle of Gallipoli, also known as the Gallipoli Campaign or the Dardanelles Campaign, was a campaign of World War I that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula (Gelibolu in modern Turkey) between April 25, 1915 and January 9, 1916 during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
Russia’s allies, namely Britain and France, launched an attack on the peninsula, with the aim of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The attack was repelled and after eight months’ fighting, with many casualties on both sides, the campaign was abandoned and the invasion force was withdrawn to Egypt.
