Turkey convened leaders and senior officials from 150 countries at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum over the weekend, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warning that international institutions face a "systemic crisis" and can no longer adequately respond to global challenges. A central focus was the search for alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz — the critical Persian Gulf chokepoint disrupted by the ongoing Iran war — with participants championing the Middle Corridor (a rail and maritime transit network linking China and Southeast Asia through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to Europe) as a viable replacement route for energy and trade flows. Syria's new President Ahmed al-Sharaa also used the forum to pitch his country's Mediterranean access as part of a broader "Four Seas" connectivity project linking the Caspian, Black, Mediterranean, and Adriatic seas, while Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, and Qatar held separate talks on mediating the Iran conflict.