Turkey today recalled its ambassador to Bangladesh for consultations after strongly protesting the execution in the country of a top Islamist leader, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.

Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail late Tuesday for the massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 independence war with Pakistan.

Turkey's ambassador to Dhaka, Devrim Ozturk, is due to arrive back in Turkey today, the news agency added. The Turkish foreign ministry had already strongly condemned the execution, saying it did not believe that "Nizami deserved such a punishment".

It said that Turkey, which has abolished capital punishment, feared that the use of such methods risked creating "rancour and hatred between our Bangladeshi brothers".