The Islamic world as the "main opposition" of the world system

It seems that the Istanbul meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation will constitute an important turning point in the Organisation's history that will take it out of being a token institution and make it effective. For the first time in the Organisation's history, we are witnessing it object so boldly to world affairs and, so to speak, assume a kind of main-opposition role within today's world order.

The mark left by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who took over the term presidency from Egypt, played an extremely important role in this. For the first time at an Organisation meeting the world system is criticized so heavily.

It was already expected that Erdoğan, who has long made the whole world memorize the phrase "the world is bigger than five," would repeat it at the OIC meeting too, giving it substance. Islamic countries badly need to become aware of their own position and, as a requirement of this, to act to demand their rights within the system. They have not done this until now. Either they are not aware of the power they possess, or there is no will to build a togetherness that would show the will to use this power.

That Erdoğan has carried the leadership he displayed within Turkey, in this setting and with such a call, to the level of the Islamic World may be a new beginning.

We can comfortably say that Erdoğan, who said from the start that when he became President, with the strength of being elected, he would not be a customary president, would not remain ordinary in the term chairmanship of the OIC either, as the statements and attitudes he displayed during the hosting showed very clearly.

In his opening speech Erdoğan asked in a thunderous voice: "Can we expect today's world system, which has built an unjust structure with the veto right held by 5 countries, to dispense justice?" He asked the leaders of the countries that make up the Islamic World why not even one country representing the Islamic World, which constitutes a quarter of the world, is among these permanent members.

This question was an open call for opposition against the World System, addressed to an Islamic World that has been subjected to every kind of injustice for the last century, that has merely hosted even the wars among its member countries and that bears all the costs of the wars.

It was a call to a high awareness that the world's second-largest international organization after the UN, if it so wishes, can turn into a great power if it can make use of the means it has by joining hands.

It is impossible for this call not to echo throughout the whole world, beginning with the Islamic World. We say beginning with the Islamic World because most of this world, in the last century, was either an area of exploitation for the advanced world or a field where even the wars among the great countries took place.

That is why, even when a security problem arises anywhere in the Islamic World, it is countries from outside the Islamic World that are called on for help to solve it and expected to intervene. Most likely these security problems are largely created by their interventions anyway.

Yet Erdoğan's call was also an invitation to the Islamic World to increase its own initiative in solving its own problems and to free itself from dependence on others.

The concrete proposals of the OIC's Istanbul meeting that found expression in Erdoğan's call, the creation of a Muslim Interpol, the establishment of a women's organization and of a joint Red Crescent organization, together with support for the Islamic Army whose initiative was launched by Saudi Arabia, will be steps in keeping with the declared spirit of the new period.

In fact, at this point it is worth looking back at the history of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and at how we came to this point.

One of the most important results of the First World War, whose hundredth anniversary we have been marking for two years, was in fact the effective end of a body called the Islamic World. As of 1918, all the lands of the Ottoman Empire, which had emerged defeated from the war, were divided up by the victorious countries, and the Islamic world was broken into states all disconnected from one another and even hostile to one another.

After this event it became almost impossible to speak of a single, solid Islamic World across the whole world.

Although the Islamic World as a socio-cultural phenomenon continued always to exist, as a political body the Islamic world came to an end.

That is why, when a state called Israel was established step by step in Jerusalem, the first Qibla of Muslims, there could be no structure capable of opposing it.

The Palestinians resisted the Israel project not as an Islamic World but as an ordinary people trying to defend their own land against an occupation. The Arab States, which had been able to exist by breaking away from the wholeness of the Islamic World, had neither the power nor the intention to object to the formation of Israel.

The wars Egypt entered against Israel were likewise entered not in the name of the Islamic World but in the name of the Egyptian people. Yet the people sent to war against Israel were acting entirely out of Islamic motivations, in the name of defending Palestine, where Jerusalem lies, against the Jews.

This non-existence of the Islamic World constituted serious emotional pressure on Muslim peoples.

In an environment where all religions act as political wholes in the world, the Muslims' inability to be a subject had always been a source of deep sorrow for Muslims.

The search to unite Muslims across the world as an ummah gave birth to international civil formations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami. The international solidarity of these movements, organized in nearly all Islamic countries, created a pressure on the policies of states that had to be taken into account.

Undoubtedly, although these structures pressured their own states, they were in the end nothing but civil formations of the Islamic World. There was no organization at the state level. Until Israel attempted to burn Jerusalem…. What happened then, you ask?

Going into the history of the matter, there is not enough room, so we will continue.