U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that he discussed the imperative of Palestinian militant group Hamas’ saying ‘yes’ to the Gaza ceasefire agreement in his talks with Turkey’s President and Foreign Minister.
“In my discussions with President Erdogan and with Minister Fidan we talked about the imperative of Hamas saying yes to the (Gaza) agreement that’s possible to finally help bring this to an end,” Blinken said, following his meeting with Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara.
“We appreciate very much the role that Turkiye can play in using its voice with Hamas, to try to bring this to a conclusion.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began talks with Turkey’s top diplomat Friday after reassurances that Ankara would never allow any let-up in the fight against rebels in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.
During their talks, Erdogan said Turkey would never ease up in the fight against rebels from the Islamist State group in Syria, despite its efforts to target a U.S.-backed Kurdish group seen as key to containing the extremists.
“Turkey will never allow any weakness to arise in the fight against ISIS,” Erdogan told him, according to an overnight statement from his office.
Turkey, he said, would take “preventive measures against all terrorist organizations, primarily the PKK/PYD/YPG and ISIS (IS) terrorist organizations, operating in Syria and posing a threat to Turkey, primarily for its national security.”
The YPG is a Kurdish force that makes up the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed group that spearheaded the offensive that defeated IS’s self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.
Ankara views the YPG and its political wing, the PYD, as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has led a decadeslong insurgency against the Turkish state, effectively blacklisting the SDF as a terror outfit.
