Top Hamas Official Visits Turkey

By SEBNEM ARSU and ETHAN BRONNER

Here in Turkey, where Mr. Haniya arrived after visiting Egypt and Sudan, he was quoted by the semi-official Anatolian Agency on Monday as saying that “the Arab spring is turning into an Islamic spring.”

Turkey, ruled by the Islamic-based Justice and Development Party, has grown close to Hamas and has downgraded its relations with Israel. In 2010, a group of ships and boats sailed from Turkey in an effort to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, and Israeli commandos boarded the vessels to stop them. When they met with resistance, the commandos killed nine activists on board. Turkey has demanded an apology and compensation; Israel has refused.

Mr. Haniya visited the Mavi Marmara, the largest ship of the flotilla, on Monday and said, “The blood of Mavi Marmara martyrs and that of Palestinian martyrs is joined for a hopeful future.”

While Mr. Haniya tours the region seeking financial and political support — he is heading to Iran, a major backer, in the coming days, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency FARS — his rivals in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority were due to meet with Israeli officials on Tuesday for the first time in 15 months.

The meeting, organized in Amman, the Jordanian capital, by King Abdullah II of Jordan, is viewed as an effort to revive peace negotiations aimed at establishing a Palestinian state, but both Palestinian and Israeli officials were keeping expectations for the meeting low. Hamas opposes negotiations with Israel as a waste of time, and it urged the Palestinian Authority not to attend.

By calling the meeting, King Abdullah is, in part, seeking to parry the rise of Islamism, especially that of Hamas within the Palestinian movement. Though Israeli officials want to help him in that task, it was not clear whether they would arrive in Jordan with proposals that could lure the Palestinians back into direct talks.

Hamas has long maintained its political headquarters in Syria, where an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has roiled the country for nearly a year. Mr. Haniya declined on Monday to comment on the situation in Syria, or to directly address numerous reports that the group is seeking another base.

“The Hamas leadership currently lives in Damascus,” Mr. Haniya said on NTV, a private television news channel, declining to elaborate on a possible move. “Everything, however, remains open to discussion.”

In a meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Sunday, Mr. Haniya thanked him for Ankara’s continuing support for the lifting of the Israeli embargo on Gaza, and he briefed senior Turkish officials on civilian hardships in Gaza. Mr. Haniya also praised Turkey’s acceptance of 11 Palestinian ex-prisoners who were released last year as part of the exchange that led to release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Omer Celik, a senior party official in Turkey, called the Gaza conflict Turkey’s “national issue” and urged Israel to recognize Hamas as a legitimate political organization; Israel, the United States and European nations regard it as a terrorist group.

“If Israel is sincere about the peace process,” Mr. Celik said on NTV, standing next to Mr. Haniya, “it should quit declaring organizations like Hamas that support the peace process illegal, and stop building settlements.”

Turkey backs Egyptian-led reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah that began last May but are moving slowly. Israel says that if Hamas joins the Palestinian Authority, there can be no peace talks. At the moment, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and head of Fatah, is caught between reconciling with Israel and reconciling with Hamas.

Mr. Haniya’s tour is expected to take him to Qatar, Tunisia and Bahrain in addition to Iran.