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All but unnoticed by the wider world, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, held an unscheduled tête-à-tête last week with the US's most despised bogeyman, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Given deep disagreements over Syria, and Iranian anger at Turkey's decision to allow the US to deploy missile defence systems on its soil, the meeting at a regional economic summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, was something of a surprise.

Neither man gave much away after the encounter, but officials said ways of defusing the Syrian crisis were discussed. After a year or more of backing opposing sides, and with a military solution apparently beyond the reach of both Bashar al-Assad's regime and Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, Iran and Turkey have a shared interest in calming things down.  ... >>>