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Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Thursday said the Mecca Alliance is nearing completion of its institutional structure and will move toward more concrete steps, while stressing Türkiye’s support for Saudi Arabia amid attacks from both its north and south.
Fidan said the three member countries were holding technical talks on issues including the alliance’s headquarters and staffing and that Türkiye aims to expand the grouping.
“For Saudi Arabia to be struck from both the south and the north and to be targeted by attackers based in Iraq is not acceptable,” Fidan said.
The long-running Yemen issue had taken a more serious form as attacks threatened Saudi critical infrastructure and the wider region. Türkiye had publicly expressed support for Saudi Arabia and conveyed necessary messages to other relevant parties, he added.
Türkiye had intensified contacts with Syria amid critical regional developments and noted that his two-day stay in Damascus showed that life was beginning to normalize.
He said he held a nearly two-hour meeting with Syrian President Ahmed Shara and described Israel as the threat with the greatest potential to destabilize Syria.
Syria’s removal from sanctions and terrorism lists had opened the way for investment, adding that the country had strong potential if stability was accompanied by good governance, he added.
On Syria’s integration process, he said Türkiye’s first priority was for the SDF to cease being a threat and hostile element. He described the principles announced so far as positive but said Ankara was closely monitoring their implementation.
Fidan said regional cooperation developed over Gaza had also been used in Syria and was now being applied during the Iran-U.S. war.
Türkiye and regional countries were increasingly institutionalizing cooperation and pursuing peaceful diplomacy in response to what he described as Israel’s destabilizing role.
Fidan argued that regional states increasingly understood they had no alternative to working together, as instability in one country inevitably affected others.
Fidan said Türkiye wants good-neighborly relations with Greece and does not want Athens to become “a tool of those who want to destabilize the region and drag it into chaos.”
He stressed Türkiye’s concerns over the militarization of islands with demilitarized status, describing it as a threat and saying Ankara had repeatedly raised the issue bilaterally, within NATO and at the U.N., since the 1960s.
He urged Greece to fulfill its treaty obligations and preserve the recent positive atmosphere in bilateral relations.
He also said talks concerning the S-400 air defense system and technical negotiations among relevant countries were continuing.
Fidan said his visit to Diyarbakir showed broad public acceptance of the “Terror-Free Türkiye” process.
The organization’s declaration that it would lay down arms had created widespread satisfaction and strengthened expectations that political and social issues could be addressed without violence.
He said discussions in the region were increasingly focused on economic development, industry, infrastructure, new border crossings and trade with neighboring countries.
He added that a permanent end to the armed issue would encourage major investment and said the September 2013 Democratization Package had helped address the issue of identity denial by opening the way for elective language courses.
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