Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan received Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Turkey on Sunday to discuss the release of the Israeli hostages and the introduction of a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hamas’s Qatar-based chief Ismail Haniyeh has held a meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, diplomatic sources said on Sunday, in the first official contact between the two for more than three months.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with Haniyeh on Saturday in Turkey, the sources said.
Hamas militants seized about 250 hostages when they launched unprecedented attacks in Israel on October 7 and the release of the remaining captives, along with the establishment of “a ceasefire as quickly as possible”, were the main topic of discussions, according to one of the sources.
The source said that during the meeting, the two sides also discussed “increasing humanitarian aid… and a two-state solution for a permanent peace”.
Fidan and Haniyeh last had official contact in a phone call on October 16.
Istanbul served as a base for Hamas political leaders before the October 7 attacks. Turkey asked the Hamas chiefs to leave after some were captured on video celebrating the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has since turned into one of the Muslim world’s harshest critics of the scale of death and destruction happening in Gaza.
Erdoğan has compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and accused the United States of sponsoring the “genocide” of Palestinians.
Avec AFP
