Turkey is having technical conversations with Israel to relieve tensions about Syria, but is not moving towards the normalization of ties, said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, on Wednesday, April 9.
Türkiye is a key sponsor of the coalition led by Islamist in Syria that demolished Bashar al-Assad in December after almost 14 years of civil war. His influence has worried Israel, who has launched air attacks and land raids to keep Syrian forces away from his border.
“Now, while we perform certain operations in Syria, there must be a distrust mechanism at some point with Israel, which is flying its planes in that region, as we do with the Americans and the Russians,” Fidan told Turk. “Or the course, it is normal to have contacts at the technical level to establish this,” he added.
But Foreign Minister said this did not mean that it would be normalization in tense ties about the Israel War against Hamas in Gaza.
Turkey has suspended all trade with Israel, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or “state terror” and “genocide” in Gaza from Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 against Israel.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, offered himself on Monday as a mediator between Israel and Türkiye. Trump, speaking together with Netanyahu’s key ally in the White House, promoted his “great relations” with Erdogan as a way for negotiations.
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