Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saturday that Hamas is willing to relinquish control of Gaza, but only if a credible Palestinian administration and a trained, non-Hamas police force are established first, conditions he said must precede any expectation that the group disarm.
In an interview on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, Fidan said that without those initial steps, expecting Hamas to disarm in the first phase of the ceasefire deal is neither "realistic nor doable."
He said the proposed police force would exclude Hamas members and would be backed by an international stabilization force. He added that Washington was pressing Israel over Türkiye's bid to join the force.
Fidan warned that failure by the international community to advance the ceasefire plan to its next stage would amount to a "huge failure" for the world and for Washington, noting that U.S. President Donald Trump had personally led the push.
Fidan also said he believed Türkiye and the U.S. should find a way to remove the U.S. CAATSA sanctions "very soon", and added the NATO allies had started working on the issue.
Washington removed Ankara from its advanced F-35 fighter jet program and imposed the sanctions in 2020 over its acquisition of Russian S-400 air defense systems. Türkiye has called the move unjust, and voiced hope that the sides could overcome the issue during President Donald Trump's second term.
Fidan also said that Washington's initial 28-point plan to end the war in Ukraine, which was criticized by Kyiv and European countries, was only a "starting point" and that it was now evolving into a new format.
He said he believed U.S. officials were "on the right path" in terms of their mediation techniques, and added he hoped the sides would not leave the negotiating table. Fidan also repeated Türkiye's readiness to host fresh peace talks between the warring parties.
