ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday told Iran’s foreign minister that resuming Iranian-US talks on Tehran’s nuclear program was the only way to achieve a solution to their dispute and the conflict with Israel, the Turkish Presidency said.

Erdogan met Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi on the sidelines of an Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Istanbul. In a statement, his office noted that Erdogan said Israel had to be stopped immediately.

Erdogan said Turkey was ready to play a facilitator role to help resume the nuclear talks, adding, “Steps should be taken as soon as possible to open up diplomacy via technical and leaders-level talks between Iran and the US,” his office added.

Erdogan also said Israel’s attacks on Iran, which were launched on June 13, two days before a planned round of nuclear talks with the United States, aimed to sabotage the negotiations, and they showed Israel did not want to resolve issues through diplomacy.

The Turkish president urged countries with influence over Israel not to listen to its “poison” and to seek a solution to the fighting via dialogue without allowing a wider conflict.

He also called on Muslim countries to increase their efforts to impose punitive measures against Israel on the basis of international law and United Nations resolutions.

Also at the summit, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his counterparts that Israel was dragging the region into “total disaster” with its attacks on Iran and added that world powers must prevent the war from spiraling into a wider conflict.

Israel says its sweeping assault, which began last week, on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program is necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its avowed plan to destroy the Jewish state.

Iran has retaliated by launching over 470 ballistic missiles and around 1,000 drones at Israel.

So far, Iran’s missile attacks have killed 24 people and wounded thousands in Israel, according to health officials and hospitals.

Some of the missiles have hit apartment buildings, a university and a hospital, causing heavy damage.

Fidan called on Muslim countries to stand with Iran against Israel, and said the region had an “Israel problem” after it campaigned against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen and others.

The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza broke out following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, which saw terrorists invade Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251. Iran-backed proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen began attacking Israel in response to the war, with Israel retaliating heavily.

Meanwhile, Erdogan announced on Saturday that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, will open an office in Ankara, saying it would deepen Turkey’s support for the agency.

Israel banned UNRWA last year after evidence emerged that it had employed members of Hamas who took part in the October 7 massacre. Hamas’s use of UNRWA facilities in Gaza has also been extensively documented.

Erdogan urged Muslim countries to provide more support to UNRWA in the wake of the Israeli ban.

Turkey has called Israel’s assault on terror groups in Gaza genocide and its move to ban UNRWA a violation of international law, particularly amid worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble, with millions displaced.

Israel vehemently denies genocide allegations, saying that it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stressing that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

“We must not allow UNRWA, which plays an irreplaceable role in terms of taking care of Palestinian refugees, to be paralyzed by Israel. We expect our organization and each member state to provide financial and moral support to UNRWA to thwart Israel’s games,” Erdogan said.

A Turkish diplomatic source said Fidan and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini were expected to sign an accord on the sidelines of the OIC meeting in Istanbul on establishing the office.

Turkey has given UNRWA $10 million a year between 2023 and 2025. In 2024, it also transferred $2 million and sent another $3 million from its AFAD disaster management authority.

Israel has handed responsibility for distributing much of the aid it lets into Gaza to a new US-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates three sites in areas guarded by Israeli troops. The UN has rejected the GHF operation, saying its distribution work is inadequate, dangerous and violates humanitarian impartiality principles. Israel says the framework is necessary to prevent aid from being looted by Hamas.

Previously, aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents had been distributed mainly by UN agencies such as UNRWA, with thousands of staff at hundreds of sites across the enclave.