Blinken wraps up Middle East tour with Turkey meetings

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wraps up a grueling Middle East diplomatic tour in Turkey after only limited success in his efforts to forge a regional consensus on how best to ease civilian suffering in Gaza as Israel pursues its war against Hamas.

Blinken met in the Turkish capital of Ankara with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan after a frantic weekend of travel that took him from Israel to Jordan, the West Bank, Cyprus and Iraq to build support for the Biden administration’s proposal for “humanitarian pauses” to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The top US diplomat hopes that pauses in the war would allow for a surge of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the release of hostages abducted by Hamas from Israel.

Neither Blinken nor Fidan spoke as they posed for photographers ahead of their formal talks in Ankara. The top US diplomat was not going to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been highly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an outlier among NATO allies in not expressing full support for Israel’s right to defend itself.