The Erdoğan difference under the leadership of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation

We can say that the Istanbul Meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has already begun to show its first effects. As the previous chair of the meeting, Egypt's coup-leading president received for the first time at this Summit the treatment he should be receiving from the entire world, and on this occasion the world was shown, with a living example, what treatment a coup-maker, someone who commits crimes against his own people, deserves and how he should be treated. Sisi, as host of the previous Summit, could not even attend Istanbul, that is, the summit of Muslim leaders, to hand over this trust.

President Erdoğan's objection to him undoubtedly played an influential role in this. Egypt took part in the Summit at foreign minister level. And he read out his message and left the Summit without pausing at all.

In fact, this was the reaction and treatment that President Erdoğan had expected already in the previous term of the OIC.

That is why Erdoğan had questioned what the OIC was for.

For as if the crime of the coup he carried out against his civilian citizens holding a peaceful protest were not enough, a man who also opened fire and massacred some three thousand people in a single day, and the OIC that remained completely silent in the face of his crimes repeated every day, fully deserved to have its function questioned.

Islam means, first and foremost, human rights, law, justice. That this oppression should be carried out by states themselves on the lands of Islam, which instills in the believer, as a strong principle, to respect and show respect to a human being by virtue of being human, was neither understandable nor acceptable, but despite the existence of the OIC such a thing could happen and the OIC could remain only a silent, unreacting spectator to it.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the protest movements launched last Friday in Egypt against Sisi, reminiscent of one of the days of the 25 January Revolution, are an aftershock of this treatment he saw at the OIC. Sisi, who tried to market the 5 days that King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who visited Egypt before coming to the OIC, spent in Egypt as an occasion restoring his own legitimacy, sold the two islands to Saudi Arabia in return for money, and this set off the Egyptian people's protests under the heading "land is honor."

In the meantime, the fact that Sisi also received a 350 thousand dollar watch as a gift from the King greatly increased the strength of the anger felt toward Sisi. Today in Egypt, just as in the 25 January Tahrir days, a broad-based uprising has begun that cannot be attributed either to the Brotherhood alone or to any single political movement. The slogan is the same: "The people want the fall of the regime."

Another important difference of the OIC summit in Istanbul was that in the final declaration one of its powerful member states was openly criticized and warned as responsible for the instabilities experienced recently in the Islamic world. The dangerous situation into which Iran, which attended the Summit at the presidential level, has pushed the Islamic world by openly following sectarian policies especially in centers such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon was emphasized without veering into a counter-sectarian error. Erdoğan's declaration of his own identity on this ground as 'not Sunni or Shiite, just Muslim' also recommended the healthy and solution-oriented position that should be taken against sectarianism.

In our previous piece we explained what the absence of Islam's political unity, formed in post-caliphate conditions in the Islamic World, has cost and the search to fill this void. While no one at the state level had any intention of filling this void, the Ikhwan and Jamaat-e-Islami played an important role in the civil sphere as interesting international organizations, but these organizations did not give Muslims a political weight in the world and could not make Muslims effective at the level of international relations.

A SPIRIT BREATHED INTO A DEAD BODY: THE OIC

The attempt in 1969 by Israel to burn Jerusalem set in motion a reflex for Muslims to become an international political power in the world as well. This reflex, not counting civil formations like the Ikhwan and Jamaat-e-Islami, was frankly at the level of states like an effort to resurrect a body that had died in 1918. The idea of establishing an organization of cooperation and solidarity among Muslim countries in the world matured on this occasion through a conference launched largely on the initiative of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

The political weight in the world of Muslims, whose population now reaches 1.7 billion, is almost nonexistent even today, despite this organization. Nearly 70 percent of the world's energy resources lie in the Muslim geography, yet only 7.5 percent of global income and only 11 percent of trade belong to this world. There is no Muslim country among the G8 countries. There is no Muslim country among the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Yet the great majority of the wars and instabilities in the world recently take place within geographies made up of Muslim countries.

By contrast, there is no Muslim country that can set the UN's will in motion for the necessary intervention in them. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Indonesia are among the 20 most developed countries, but the effectiveness of this structure and the effect of the Muslim presence within it are quite limited.

At the 38th Summit of Foreign Ministers held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in July 2011, the organization decided to change its name to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and adopted an emblem with the Kaaba at its center.

In a world where regional organizations and organizations of international solidarity and cooperation are growing in importance, the importance of a structure that can represent the Muslim world and ensure cooperation, even unity, among Muslims makes itself felt every day as a need. There is serious pressure, stemming from the very sociology of the Muslim population, for this structure, set in motion in 1969 by Jerusalem sensitivity, to become somewhat more effective.

Unfortunately, despite this pressure and despite the existence of the OIC, what is happening today in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine and Myanmar continues to happen.

We hope that the OIC, which has not so far been able to fulfil its desired function, will become more functional thanks to close cooperation between Turkey's hosting and Saudi Arabia under the leadership of Salman bin Abdulaziz, with an approach and sensitivity similar to that of King Faisal, who first set it in motion.