FILE- Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan . AFP
In an interview with Japanese news agency, Nikkei Asia, Fidan described what he called a "golden opportunity" for regional states to build a cooperative security framework grounded in mutual recognition.
"All the countries in the region should be committing to each other's territorial integrity, sovereignty, and security," he said.
The proposed platform would initially bring together Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Gulf states, with the possibility of broader participation, Fidan said. "When things return to normal, maybe Iran should also be part of it," he stated.
He added that "Israel can join this process if it recognizes a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders," stressing that "if that problem is solved, I think the security of Israel will be very much assisted by the regional countries, too."
Rejecting Israeli political rhetoric that portrays Turkey as a strategic adversary, Fidan was blunt.
"In Israeli domestic politics, unfortunately, they need an enemy to make politics all the time to conduct their regional ambitions. But everybody knows Israel is not after its security but after more land," he said, citing Israeli military assualts on Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Syria, and Lebanon.
The international community, he argued, should "prevent Israel from further destabilizing not only the regional order but the global order as well."
On bilateral relations, Fidan said ties between Turkey and Israel have been severely strained by the war on Gaza. He noted that trade between the two countries reached $10 billion before it was suspended.
"We made it very clear when we stopped the trade: Israel must stop killing Palestinians and must stop preventing Gazans from having access to basic human needs such as food, shelter, medicine and water," Fidan said. "If these are met, we can go back to normal life, no problem. We want to achieve a two-state solution."
Fidan’s remarks came days after US President Donald Trump called on more Arab and Muslim countries to join the Abraham Accords, a set of diplomatic agreements brokered by the United States in 2020 to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab countries.
Short link: