Frankly Speaking: What hope is there for Gaza’s children?

KARTALKAYA, Turkiye: Anger was growing in Turkiye on Wednesday as allegations piled up that negligence played a role in the deaths of 79 people who perished when a huge fire swept through a luxury ski resort hotel in northern Turkiye.
With the nation observing a day of mourning, grieving families began burying their dead as questions multiplied about fire safety measures at the 12-story Grand Kartal Hotel perched on a mountaintop in the Kartalkaya resort.
Front pages, including those of the pro-government dailies, were plastered with allegations of negligence which they blamed for the shocking death toll.
On a freezing foggy morning, with flags flying at half-mast, 12 of the 51 injured were still in hospital, including one in intensive care.
“There is no excuse for such a high number of deaths in 2025,” Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition CHP party, said outside the blackened facade of the hotel where rescuers were combing through the ruins on Wednesday.
The fire, which began in the middle of the night, struck at peak season for the hotel, with 238 guests staying for the winter school holidays which began on Friday.
At a funeral in the nearby town of Bolu for eight members of the same family who died in the blaze, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could be seen wiping away tears, his head bowed.
“When I got to the hotel, there were flames everywhere and we could hear screams,” said Cevdet Can, who runs a nearby ski school.
“I saw one person jump out of the window” to her death, Can told AFP, adding that it was seeing children trapped “that upset me most.”
Another ski instructor who escaped the hotel unharmed said he was unable to rescue his pupils, the youngest of whom was six.
“I lost five of my students who were staying on the sixth and seventh floors,” 58-year-old Necmi Kepcetutan told AFP, adding that another colleague had jumped to her death.
The blaze broke out around 3:30 am (0030 GMT), sparking panic among the guests, many of whom tried to climb out of the windows, using bedsheets as ropes.
Some fell to their deaths, media reports said.
Speaking to Turkish media outlets, many survivors told the same story: that there were no alarms warning them about the fire, no fire doors, and no safe ways for people to exit the hotel.
Tourism Minister Nuri Ersoy on Tuesday said that the hotel had passed an inspection last year and had two fire escapes, saying “no issues related to fire safety had been flagged by the fire department.”
A rescuer with the national catastrophe management agency Afad told AFP on condition of anonymity that “I saw fire escapes, but I suggest comparing this hotel’s fire escapes to those at nearby hotels. In the end, experts will decide.”
So far, 11 people have been arrested, among them the hotel’s owner, general manager, director and chief electrician, as well as the chief of Bolu’s fire department, the justice ministry told AFP.
The hotel’s management has presented its condolences and said it would cooperate with authorities to “shed full light on this accident.”
Situated at one of the most expensive ski resorts in Turkiye, the hotel boasted a prestigious client list that included executives, entrepreneurs and well-known doctors, many of whom were there with their children and family members.
By Wednesday afternoon, more than 20 victims had yet to be identified.

DAVOS: Saudi Vision 2030 is an inspiration for Syria, which needs to become a place of peace and development, Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al-Shaibaani told the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

“Where do we see inspiration for the new Syria? We have the Vision 2030 of Saudi Arabia,” Al-Shaibaani said during a conversation with former UK prime minister Tony Blair at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“We need Syria to be a place of peace, to be a place of development, a place free of war.”

Having become foreign minister following the overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime on Dec. 8 last year, Al-Shaibaani said the lifting of economic sanctions imposed on the former regime would be “key” to establishing stability in his country.

“Removing economic sanctions is the key for the stability of Syria,” he said, adding that they were imposed for the benefit of Syrians, but are now “against the Syrian people.”

“The reason for these sanctions is now in Moscow,” he said, referring to Assad, who fled to the Russian capital. A new government led by the victorious Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham has since taken Assad’s place, but still does not have full control over the nation’s territory.

“The Syrian people shouldn’t be punished” now that the deposed ruler was no longer in power, said Al-Shaibaani. “We inherited a collapsed state from the Assad regime, there is no economic system,” he added, saying he hoped “the economy in the future will be open.”

Al-Shaibaani said a committee had been formed to study economic conditions and infrastructure in Syria and would focus on privatization efforts, including of oil, cotton, and factories, while exploring “public-private partnerships to encourage investment into airports, railways and roads.”

Al-Shaibaani also confirmed that the country will open its economy to foreign investments, adding that Damascus was working on partnerships with Gulf states in the energy sector.

The new Syrian government has been especially keen to reach out to the Gulf states to reestablish ties, which have long suffered as a result of the Assad regime’s support for the narcotics trade.

“We chose to visit the Gulf countries, because we wanted to fix the relations with these countries, where Assad had made a lot of problems for them,” Al-Shaibaani said.

“(The Assad regime) used harsh language against them, exported Captagon there, these are important countries to the region. But Syria should also take its role in the region, and they can help us with that.”

Al-Shaibaani was not the only Middle Eastern voice at Davos on Wednesday. Iran’s vice-president for strategic affairs, Javad Zarif, also shared his reflections on the regional situation in the wake of Israel’s ceasefires with Hamas and Hezbollah. 

Speaking to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Zarif said: “The resistance will stay as long as the occupation stays, as long as repression stays. Resistance to Israel, to Israeli occupation, to apartheid, to genocide, existed before the Iranian revolution.”

Zarif said Hamas still exists in Gaza and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not achieve his goal of destroying the Palestinian militant group during the 15-month war in the enclave.

“Hamas is still there. Israel had to come to a temporary ceasefire. I hope it will be permanent, for the sake of 50,000 people who were massacred by Israel, so that there won’t be another 50,000, but resistance is not dead,” said Zarif.

“I can tell you that the wish for the resistance to go away has been based on a misrepresentation, a framing by Israel, that this is not an Israeli-Palestinian issue, but an Israeli-Iranian issue.”

Zarif said the decades-old conflict can only be ended by resolving the Palestinian question.

“If you want to resolve the problem of Palestine, you should not look at Iran,” he said. “You should look at the Palestinian issue.

“As long as the Palestinian issue is there, the struggle will be there, the resistance will be there, and there will be support from the international community, including from Arab allies of the US.”

Speaking about US President Donald Trump, Zarif said he hoped  “a ‘Trump 2’ will be more serious, more focused, more realistic” when dealing with Iran.

In 2018, during his first term, Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama, and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran as part of his “maximum pressure” policy against the regime.

Tehran responded by breaching the deal in several ways, including by accelerating its uranium enrichment program.

Trump has vowed to return to the policy he pursued in his previous term that sought to use economic pressure to force Iran to negotiate a deal on its nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and regional activities, including its support for proxy militias.

Zarif added that Iran has good relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and that he has proposed a new arrangement in the region that is based on amity.

“I have proposed in an article I recently wrote in The Economist, after my Foreign Affairs article, that we should have a new arrangement in this region,” he said.

“I call it MWADA: Muslim, West Asia Dialog Association. In Arabic, ‘mwada’ means ‘amity,’ and the title in The Economist was ‘Amity instead of enmity.’ Let’s do that.”

In his own address earlier in the day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lamented the recent rash of conflicts in the Middle East.

“We see a multiplication of conflicts, some of which are leading to a reshaping of different regions of the world — not least the Middle East,” he told the annual meeting.

He did, however, highlight recent progress, including the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which has already resulted in the exchange of several prisoners and hostages.

“There is, finally, a measure of hope when the ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza takes place — and we are working to surge up desperately needed humanitarian aid,” Guterres said.

He also lauded the recent ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and the election of a new Lebanese president and prime minister, potentially ending years of political deadlock.

“I was also just in Lebanon where a cessation of hostilities is holding, and a new government is taking shape after two years of stalemate,” he said.

In relation to Syria, Guterres said there was still a danger of further disorder unless the victorious HTS formed an inclusive administration that could work with the international community.

“We still have a strong risk of fragmentation and of extremism in at least parts of the Syrian territory,” he said.

“It is in the interest of us all to engage to make things move in the direction of an inclusive form of governance and I think some gesture must be made in relation to the sanctions.”