US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Saturday for talks to discuss the Israel-Hamas war.
Earlier on Saturday, Washington’s top diplomat held a two-hour meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, to discuss “the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Sweden’s NATO accession process, bilateral and regional issues,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.
Blinken’s visit will discuss what Turkey and other countries can do to exert influence, particularly on Iran and its proxies, to ease rising tensions, speed up the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, and begin serious planning for a post-war Gaza, much of which is due to three months. the destruction, reconstruction and management of a period of intense Israeli bombardment.
Istanbul was home to a base for Hamas political leaders before raids in Israel killed around 1,140 people and triggered a retaliatory attack that the Gaza Health Ministry said killed more than 22,700 people, mostly women and children.
Turkey had asked Hamas leaders to leave following some of them were caught in a video celebrating the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
According to American officials, one of the most important issues A. Blinken will stress is that it is important for the US that Turkey ratifies Sweden’s membership in NATO, a long-delayed process that the Turks said they would complete in the near future. Sweden’s entry into the alliance is considered one of the essential countermeasures to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The US secretary of state launched his latest emergency diplomatic mission in the Middle East with a visit to Turkey on Saturday, as the world fears that Israel’s war once morest the Islamist group Hamas might escalate into a wider conflict.
Blinken’s fourth crisis trip in three months comes amid troubling developments outside the Gaza Strip, including in Lebanon, northern Israel, the Red Sea and Iraq, which have severely strained US efforts to prevent a regional conflagration weeks following the war began, and Israel the military operation is drawing increasing international criticism.
A senior US administration official said Blinken would press Israel to increase aid to the Palestinians and move to a stage in the struggle that would allow displaced people to begin returning to their homes.
A. Blinken’s next stop following Turkey is Crete, where he will try to resolve the issue of Greece’s concerns regarding the impending sale of US fighter jets to Ankara.
Later on Saturday, A. Blinken will go to Jordan, which, in addition to Israel, has been the secretary’s most frequent stop on his recent trips to the Middle East and will be the first Arab country visited in the current one.
He will visit Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Sunday and Monday. After that, A. Blinken will visit Israel and the West Bank on Tuesday and Wednesday, and he will end his crisis trip in Egypt.
#European #diplomacy #peace #Israel #Palestine
2024-07-07 05:40:09
