Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Sunday offered terse words for both the Greek Cypriot side and Israel for “forming an alliance against Muslim countries” during his closing address at the Antalya diplomacy forum.
“We are not like Israel. They met with the Greek Cypriot administration and formed an alliance against Muslim countries in the region. We do not do what they do. We are looking for ways to extinguish the conflicts in our region, ensure economic progress, and bring stability to life,” he said.
He added that if the eastern Mediterranean region “continues to expect help from outside and wait for knights in shining armour, it will continue to be left alone with these problems”.
Later, when asked about relations between the Greek Cypriots and Israel, he said that Turkey’s “reaction” to them has been “minimal”, as “we never wanted to disturb the spirit of cooperation” between Turkey and Greece.
He also said that the matter is “not just a problem for Turkey”, but that “while they do not say it, all the Muslim countries in the region are seriously concerned and asking questions”.
The “alliance” to which Fidan was referring is part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had in February described as a “hexagon of alliances” for his country, with Cyprus having been named as part of that “hexagon”.
“We will create an entire system, essentially a kind of hexagon of alliances, around or within the Middle East, including India, Arab national, African Nations, Mediterranean nations – Greece and Cyprus – and nations in Asia that I won’t detail at the moment,” he said.
He added that the aim of this “hexagon of alliances” it to “create an axis of countries that see reality, the challenges, and the goals in the same way, in contrast to the radical axes”, listing those axes as “both the radical Shiite axis, which we have hit very hard, and also the emerging axis, the radical Sunni axis”.
The Greek Cypriot side’s political gravitation towards Israel had also been criticised by Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman during his appearance at the forum.
“If an alliance is formed with a state which kills children, and this is done by violating the will and sovereignty of the Turkish Cypriot people, I will explain this to the entire international community. This is a violation of my sovereign rights, my equal sovereign rights,” he said.
Relations between Turkey and Israel soured in the aftermath of Israel’s offensive into Gaza in 2023, and have only continued to sour since Israel and the United States embarked on a new conflict with Iran at the beginning of last month.
Most recently, Netanyahu had accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of “accommodating … Iran’s terror regime and its proxies” and of “massacring his own Kurdish citizens”.
In response, Erdogan’s communications director Burhanettin Duran said that Netanyahu has “orchestrated a genocide in Gaza and attacked seven countries in the region”.
“He is a criminal with arrest warrants to his name with no friends left. He is dragging the region to chaos and conflict as a political survival strategy. Everyone knows that he has no moral values and legitimacy to lecture anyone. He will be held accountable sooner or later for his crimes against humanity,” he said.
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