Turkey on Monday urged Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.

Turkey on Monday urged Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.

"We want both countries to immediately move away from the situation of tension that will obviously only add to the already severe tensions existing in the Middle East," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in Ankara's first reaction to the crisis.

"The region is already a powder keg," Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said after a cabinet meeting, quoted by the Anatolia news agency. "Enough is enough. We need our peace in the region."

Saudi authorities announced on Saturday it had executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others, prompting a furious reaction from Tehran and anti-Saudi protests.

Sheikh Nimr was a vocal supporter of the mass pro-democracy protests against Riyadh, which erupted in Eastern Province in 2011, where a Shia majority has long complained of marginalization.

Riyadh and then Bahrain and Sudan have now severed relations with Tehran, the main Shiite power.

In a rare public criticism of Ankara's ally, Kurtulmus emphasized that Turkey, which abolished the death penalty as part of its bid to join the EU, was opposed to capital punishment.

"We are a country that abolished the death penalty. Death penalties, especially ones that are politically-motivated, are of no help to making peace in the region," he said.

"These are two major Islamic countries for Turkey. We have good relations with each of them," Kurtulmus said.