Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned that a war between Israel and Iran must be seen as a high possibility, amid ongoing regional crises.
"We need to be prepared for this as a country and region," Fidan told a live broadcast Thursday, adding that Ankara does not want the war to expand across the region and has been working tirelessly to put an end to the conflicts that have devastated the Middle East in the past two decades.
Fidan also said Iran is entitled to self-defense in the face of attacks.
Regarding reports about the assassination of Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar, Fidan said they would wait until the Palestinian resistance group makes a statement.
The top Turkish diplomat said Ankara had predicted that Israel would try to annihilate Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis and that its attacks on Lebanon did not come as a surprise. He continued by saying that the biggest concern since Oct. 7 has been Israel's potential to open new fronts across the region and Tel Aviv has been striving toward this goal.
"Right now, we're facing intertwined events... a genocide is taking place in Gaza, while there's also Lebanon and there's also the possibility of war with Iran," Fidan said, adding that all of them have different dynamics.
He noted that some countries had already had problems with Iran and its proxies before the Gaza war as he said it was "unfortunate" that this issue has become interlaced with the Palestinian issue and that most countries in the region are not in a position to stand up against Israel.
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 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.
