Hakan Fidan

On 5 October Fidan joined Defence Minister Yasar Guler and Chief of the General Staff Selcuk Bayraktaroglu in Riyadh, where the three Mecca pact states triggered its collective-defence clause for the first time and pledged forces for rapid deployment to Saudi Arabia. On 8 October he called the pact defensive: Turkey "will not send its troops to another country's territory to launch an attack".

On 17 October he sat down with Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation gathering in Baghdad, the day Araghchi said Tehran would negotiate with Washington only with "credible guarantees" against new attacks. Fidan is holding a defence commitment to Riyadh and a channel to Tehran at once.

Fidan played host on 18 April, when Ankara brought Egyptian, Pakistani and Saudi ministers to the Antalya Diplomacy Forum for the group's third session. Washington was not invited, and Turkey used the meeting to push the four-state format beyond truce brokering into Gulf shipping and the lifting of sanctions on Iran.

Wire reports of a two-week truce extension agreed at Antalya did not survive Tehran's reply. Within a day Iran's Foreign Ministry disowned the extension and ruled out giving up its enriched uranium. Fidan could gather the regional powers around the strait, but Ankara held no lever over the nuclear file.