Eurasia Press & News
The top Turkish diplomat, who met with the Emirati leaders in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, is set to travel to Qatar, where Hamas’ political bureau is based.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday and will head to Qatar next as Ankara is seeking to raise its mediator role in the Israel-Hamas war.
UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Fidan discussed ways to deliver humanitarian assistance to Gaza and to achieve peace during their meeting in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati state news agency reported. The Turkish Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, released a photo of the duo in a social media post without providing more details.
The Turkish ministry separately said that Fidan would travel to Doha to meet with his Qatari counterpart and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim, as well as Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on Wednesday.
Hamas leadership in Qatar
It remains unclear whether Fidan will meet with Hamas’ political leaders during his trip to Doha, where the group’s political bureau is based. Erdogan and Fidan have held separate phone conversations with the group’s political head, Ismail Haniyeh, since Oct. 7.
Qatar, along with Egypt and the Red Cross, has been influential in the release of four individuals that Hamas took captive during its brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7 as the ensuing war between Israel and the militant group is raging on.
Israel said earlier this week that a total of 222 hostages, including third-country nationals, children and elders, were being held in the Gaza Strip. However, later on Monday Hamas released two more elderly women in addition to the two American-Israeli citizens freed last week.
Fidan’s trip comes as Ankara is speeding up international diplomatic traffic in seeking a mediator role between Israelis and Palestinians.
Earlier this month, Fidan said his country had received requests from various countries for the release of their nationals and that Ankara initiated talks with Hamas over the matter.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly said Ankara was ready to play a mediator role between the involved parties should they demand.
Ankara considers itself well-positioned for such role, having brokered peace talks between Israel and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government in 2008. The talks broke off without a breakthrough after roughly five rounds of meetings.
Turkey had also acted as a mediator in the early 2010s in the internal talks between rival Palestinian factions. Erdogan still has close ties with Palestinian leaders, as he hosted a rare meeting between Haniyeh and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in July.
Erdogan’s balancing act
Ankara maintains direct channels with Hamas’ political wing. Haniyeh was in Turkey when the militant group’s unprecedented Oct. 7 attack took place, but left the country after Ankara became annoyed by the group’s leading members bragging about the assault, Al-Monitor reported over the weekend.
After more than a decade-long antagonism, Turkey and Israel fully normalized their diplomatic ties last fall as part of Ankara’s efforts to repair its ties with its former regional rivals, also including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Erdogan and his onetime arch-enemy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held their first ever official meeting last month on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, after the latter’s earlier scheduled visit to Turkey was canceled.
Erdogan, a leading champion of the Palestinian cause, struck an unusually moderate tone initially toward the Jewish state in the face of Hamas’ attack. But he has ramped up his rhetoric as the humanitarian toll in Gaza is rising and said last week that the Israeli actions in Gaza were “amounting to a genocide.”
The Turkish leader, who is set to attend a pro-Palestinian rally on Saturday, also lashed out at the Western capitals over what he described as their silence about civilian deaths in the Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan told Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, that “the silence of Western governments has turned the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to an inexorable dimension,” during a phone call on Tuesday, the Turkish presidency said.
In a separate statement on Tuesday, Erdogan also accused the United Nations Security Council of deepening the crisis in Gaza by taking “a one-sided attitude, instead of stopping the bloodshed, ensuring a ceasefire as soon as possible, and taking steps to prevent civilian casualties.”
