Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held a phone call with his Palestinian counterpart Mohammad Mustafa. Fidan and Mustafa, who also serves as the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, discussed the need for a lasting and immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
Fidan asked Mustafa about the latest situation in the West Bank and renewed Türkiye’s pledge for political and economic support to Palestine, Foreign Ministry sources said on Tuesday.
Mustafa visited Türkiye last month, a few months after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ historic address to the Turkish Parliament.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish government have been outspoken in their opposition to Israel’s brutal offensive on Gaza and, more recently, in Lebanon.
The offensive, now in its second year, has killed over 45,000 people, mostly women and children, and left most of Gaza a devastated, uninhabitable wasteland, with food, medicine and water all in short supply.
Gaza’s population has declined by 6% as a result of Israel’s genocidal war, official figures showed on Tuesday. Ola Awad, head of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), said the territory’s population dropped to 2.1 million, down by 160,000 people since 2023. The PCBS estimated the Palestinian population at around 15 million, including 5.5 living in Gaza and the West Bank, 1.8 million inside Israel and the rest in the diaspora worldwide.
The Israeli army continued its genocidal war on Gaza since a Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, despite a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.
In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.