Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who is on his fourth tour in the region since the Battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood, while Bloomberg quoted an American official as saying that Washington is seeking to mobilize Ankara’s support for plans to govern the Gaza Strip after the war.
The meeting took place in the presence of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, the head of the intelligence service, Ibrahim Kalin, and the US ambassador to Ankara, Jeffrey Flake.
During Blinken’s last visit to Ankara at the beginning of last November, Erdogan did not meet him, and he criticized him personally because of his statements in which he said that he was visiting Israel because he was a Jew and not an ambassador to the United States, accusing him of seeking to turn the Israeli aggression on Gaza into a religious war.
Erdogan also harshly criticized Washington for its support for Israel, whose aggression against Gaza led to the martyrdom of more than 22,000 Palestinian civilians, most of them children and women.
Blinken met his Turkish counterpart earlier today, Saturday, and they discussed the Israeli aggression against Gaza and the worsening humanitarian crisis there due to Israeli practices, in addition to the file of Sweden joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), according to a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement.
Blinken’s visit to Ankara comes after the US State Department set a reward of $10 million in exchange for information regarding 5 people whom Washington accuses of representing the financial network of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and 3 of whom have resided in Turkey for a long time.
Blinken arrived yesterday evening, Friday, in Istanbul, as part of a new regional tour, which will also lead him to Israel, the occupied West Bank, and Qatar, to discuss ways to avoid the expansion of the conflict in the region, 3 months after the Israeli aggression on Gaza, and to push for the introduction of additional aid to the Gaza Strip.
Bloomberg News quoted a senior American official accompanying Blinken on his trip as saying that Washington is seeking to mobilize Ankara’s support for plans to govern Gaza after the war.
The same source added that Blinken will convey a message to the region, that Washington will respond to attacks targeting its interests, adding that America expects the Arab partners to convey the message that Blinken carries to Iran.
Sweden file
Sweden’s accession to NATO is a pivotal issue in Blinken’s visit to Ankara. After the Turkish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee approved Sweden’s joining the alliance, the Turkish Parliament still has not voted on the accession process.
Türkiye and Hungary are the only two countries in the alliance that are obstructing Sweden’s accession.
Ankara demands that Sweden hand over wanted members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and prevent the activity of the party, which Turkey, the European Union and America describe as a terrorist party.
Turkey is also demanding that the United States hand over the F-16 aircraft that it paid for but did not receive, as successive American administrations claim that the US House of Representatives (Congress) opposes completing the deal.
It is noteworthy that the US administration can bypass Congress and suspend the requirement for Congress to review the deal, as it did when supplying weapons to Israel last month “under the pretext of the national interests of the United States.”