Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Friday that a permanent cease-fire has to be reached in the Gaza Strip and the door should be opened to a two-state solution between Palestine and Israel.
“It has become an indispensable responsibility to end this great tragedy and massacre experienced by our Gazan brothers as soon as possible and to ensure that concrete steps are taken towards this end,” Fidan told Turkish reporters at a news conference in Washington.
Fidan is on a two-day visit to the US to meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss relations, regional and international issues, particularly the situation in Gaza.
A Türkiye-U.S. Strategic Mechanism meeting was held during his visit and Fidan met high-level US officials, including US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Benjamin Cardin, the chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Phil Gordon, National Security Advisor to US Vice President Kamala Harris.
Fidan said Türkiye shared views on the urgent need for humanitarian aid to Gaza.
“Such a level of consensus has never been achieved in any event in the world,” said Fidan, adding some countries, like Türkiye, want an uninterrupted permanent cease-fire.
Fidan said international organizations, especially the UN, and many countries feel obliged to do something about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
He said the US’s approach to establishing a temporary port in Gaza to get aid was a result of the reaction by the international community.
“Because this is not only a heavy burden on the conscience, but also appears to be a fuse that will mobilize and ignite the countries’ own societies in an unexpected way,” he said.
The minister added some countries are “blind and deaf” when it comes to Israeli actions.
“The deliberate murder of more than 30,000 innocent civilians in Gaza, of course, represents a new point in oppression,” he said, and the continuation of the crisis is an “unbearable reality.”
Israel launched a destructive military campaign in the Gaza Strip in response to an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, which Tel Aviv said killed less than 1,200 people.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have since been killed with the majority of the 2.3 million residents displaced and many starving amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe.
source: Anadolu agency
