The meeting was held in the presence of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Ebrahim Raisi as well as some other high-ranking officials from both countries in Tehran on Tuesday evening.

The two sides discussed finding ways to upgrade the relations between Ankara and Tehran in different fields.

In the meeting, President Raisi underlined that the Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to expand the level of ties with neighboring states.

Iran welcomes the development of relations with all neighboring countries, he said, adding that the Republic of Turkey and the Islamic Republic have abundant commonalities and longstanding friendship; so, Turkey among regional states enjoys very proper situation in political and trade exchanges with Iran.

The president also evaluated Ankara-Tehran ties as positive and progressive, noting that the two countries should pursue appropriate policy-making to move towards increasing trade exchanges to 30 billion dollars per annum.

The authorities of both countries referred to 60 percent expansion of mutual ties in last year, calling for removing obstacles in the way of setting up science and technology parks, cooperating in environment, extraditing criminals, overcoming the dust problem, expanding collaborations in energy, economy and sports as well as facilitating banking and investment interactions.

In the seventh meeting of the Turkey-Iran High-Level Cooperation Council, the Islamic Republic expressed readiness to provide the neighboring country with secure energy supply.

The two states agreed to put extending the gas export contract from Iran to Turkey for another 25 years on the agenda.

They also discussed Iran’s concerns on the Aras River and the need for respecting Iranians’ rights in this regard, and both sides reached consensus to follow up the issue in the future consultations.

The Turkish delegation also stays in Iran to participate in the seventh Astana peace summit to discuss the situation in Syria.

Presidents of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia Vladimir Putin, and Iran Ebrahim Raisi along with a Syrian official will hold talks in the Astana peace talks, stressing the need for respecting Syria’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The summits were initiated in Kazakhstan’s capital in January 2017, so the peace negotiations were called Astana peace talks back then.

The talks retained the same name as the Astana negotiations after Kazakhstan changed the name of its capital city to Nur-Sultan in 2019.