Dar, Fidan Hold Sixth Call of 2026 on Regional Diplomacy

Pakistan’s foreign minister and his Turkish counterpart spoke by phone again this week, the sixth confirmed call between Ishaq Dar and Hakan Fidan so far in 2026 — a cadence that has turned what would normally be a routine diplomatic courtesy into one of the more consistent bilateral channels running through a year of regional upheaval.

The two ministers discussed recent regional developments and reaffirmed commitment to strengthening cooperation, agreeing that dialogue and diplomacy remain the path forward for regional challenges, according to Dar’s own account of the call. That language is nearly identical to statements issued after their March, April and June conversations, which is less a sign of empty repetition than of two governments deliberately keeping a channel open through a year that has included the outbreak of the US-Iran war, its stalled ceasefire, and now the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement binding Pakistan and Turkey into a formal mutual-defense arrangement alongside Saudi Arabia.

The relationship’s substance has shifted even where the language hasn’t. April’s call, according to Turkish foreign ministry sources, focused specifically on ending the US-Israeli war on Iran. June’s conversation welcomed what both sides called encouraging progress toward a US-Iran understanding — optimism that has since given way to Iran’s public denial of ceasefire extension talks and a stalled diplomatic track. July’s call pivoted toward Gaza, with both ministers expressing concern over Israeli military actions and violations at Al-Aqsa. This week’s readout, by contrast, offers no specific topic, which given the pattern likely reflects continued coordination on the fraying Iran ceasefire, Gaza, and the aftermath of the Mecca pact all at once, folded into general language about “regional developments” rather than singled out individually.

Fidan’s own visit to Islamabad in July gave the relationship a concrete institutional anchor beyond phone diplomacy: the two sides used that meeting to prepare for the upcoming seventh session of the Pakistan-Turkiye High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council, and Dar used the occasion to reaffirm Ankara’s support for Kashmir alongside Pakistan’s backing for Turkish Cypriot rights — the kind of reciprocal positioning that underpins why this relationship generates so much recurring diplomatic contact in the first place.

What makes the frequency notable isn’t any single call’s content but the trend line: Pakistan is running near-monthly high-level contact with Turkey through a year when its foreign ministry has simultaneously been managing mediation between Washington and Tehran, a new trilateral defense pact, and Gaza-related diplomacy — suggesting Ankara has become one of Islamabad’s primary coordination partners for nearly every regional crisis unfolding at once, rather than a relationship reserved for bilateral matters alone.