Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will be visiting Türkiye, as well as Jordan and Egypt, this week to discuss ways to stop Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
The visit is part of Tehran’s reach-out to regional countries “to end genocide, atrocity, and aggression,” Iranian foreign ministry's spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Wednesday in a post on X.
Over the past week, Araqchi has visited Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Oman to ease tensions.
The developments come against the backdrop of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza against the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which has been raging for more than a year and has expanded to include Lebanon in recent weeks.
Tehran fired about 200 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 in revenge for the killing of its closest allies, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as an Iranian general. Israel vowed last week that retaliatory measures would be “deadly, precise and surprising.”
Türkiye, fiercely critical of Israel’s brutal offensive in Gaza, which it and others say amounts to genocide, has been on alert about a possible regional spillover of the conflict with Israel’s persistent attacks on Lebanon and Iran’s retaliation.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has warned Netanyahu’s administration may very well target Türkiye next. "The Israeli administration, which acts upon its delusion of the 'Promised Land,' will set its sights on our homeland after Palestine and Lebanon," he said.
Erdoğan often calls for unity among Muslim countries, arguing the current conflict was not between Israel and Palestine but “a fight between expansionist Zionism and Muslims defending their homeland.”
Türkiye itself accelerated normalization processes with Islamic countries with whom ties were lukewarm or nonexistent as the conflict raged on, including with Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria.
Türkiye and Iran put aside their hostilities in the 17th century and have since pursued close ties, regardless of regime changes, replacing an empire with a republic, etc. However, culturally close ties occasionally strained over other conflicts in the region.
More recently, Ankara and Tehran found themselves on opposing sides in the Syria civil war, with Tehran backing the Assad regime and Türkiye siding with the opposition. Yet, the situation never actually translated into an all-out conflict between the two neighbors while trade relations between Türkiye and Iran remained unaffected.
Ankara and Tehran are among staunch supporters of the Hamas liberation movement, whose incursion into Israel in October 2023 was followed by Israel's ceaseless attacks on the Gaza Strip, which killed more than 42,000 people, mostly children and women.
