Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a video conference meeting with European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Vahdettin Pavilion in Istanbul, Turkey on March 19, 2021. Photo: VCG

Turkey and its Western allies climbed down from a full-blown diplomatic crisis on Monday after foreign embassies said that they abide by diplomatic conventions on noninterference, averting a threatened expulsion of 10 ambassadors.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who said at the weekend he had ordered the envoys to be declared "persona non grata" for seeking the release of a jailed philanthropist, told a news conference they had stepped back and would be more careful.

"Our goal is never to create crises, it is to protect the rights, laws, honor and sovereignty of our country," Erdogan said in a televised address.

Despite his defiant tone, Erdogan's comments on Monday were a marked change to cool tensions after threats he made at the weekend.

The ambassadors, including the US envoy, had called on authorities last week to free Osman Kavala, a philanthropist detained for four years on charges of financing protests and involvement in an attempted coup. He denies the charges.

The public call infuriated Ankara, which said the diplomats - also from Germany, France, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland - were interfering in Turkey's internal affairs.

As Erdogan convened his ministers on Monday afternoon for a session which could have confirmed the expulsions and triggered the deepest rift with the West in his 19 years in power, several embassies put out a brief statement.

"The United States notes that it maintains compliance with Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations," the US Embassy said on Twitter. The other embassies published similar messages or retweeted the US message.

AFP