The least developed countries and Turkey

Turkey is hosting two very important meetings this week. The first was the UN World Humanitarian Summit held in Istanbul at the beginning of the week. The second is the Mid-Term Review Conference of the Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries, which began on Friday in Antalya. Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu carried out the opening of the meeting. This important meeting continues with sessions in which parliamentarians will hold consultations.

The widening of the scissors between developed countries and undeveloped and developing countries every passing day is the greatest obstacle to ensuring sustainable peace and stability. It can be said that the much-debated dimension of globalization is in fact formed by these unequal transfers of surplus value. In the early 1990s, the discourse of globalization promised that prosperity would increase with the development of specialization and cooperation in the Least Developed countries too. But before long, at the end of the 1990s, it was seen that this promise had not been fulfilled, and that the transfer of surplus value from the periphery to the center had even increased compared to the previous period. The widening of the scissors brought with it issues threatening sustainable peace and stability, such as terrorism and marginalization.

While the level of prosperity is quite high in one part of the world, in another part people lose their lives from hunger, from inability to reach clean water sources, or from epidemic diseases that are by now quite simple to prevent. This is the matter that developed economies, especially the G-8 and G-20 countries, should particularly focus on today.

That 900 million people have an average income of 800 Dollars a year is not only an inequality that wrenches all our hearts but also a threat in terms of global peace and the sustainable growth of the world economy.

Today we are speaking of 60 million displaced asylum seekers across the world. This figure is the largest number to have emerged since the Second World War, and therefore a refugee crisis on a global scale is at issue.

In Turkey alone, the number of asylum seekers from Syria has exceeded 2.7 million.

The climate differences and pollution of the atmosphere that have arisen as a result of developed countries' resistance, particularly on the release of harmful gases, produce far more serious consequences in the Least Developed Countries. That the developed world, which is disturbed by the mass movements of the people of these countries toward the Developed Countries with the dream of a better future, cannot evaluate the matter one-sidedly is the clearest indication.

The UN World Humanitarian Summit, held for the first time in history in Istanbul last weekend under Turkey's hosting, is also an important step taken at this point. The messages our esteemed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave at this summit clearly set forth Turkey's approach to the matter.

Protecting the dignity and honor of people and humanity, ensuring the security of all people, ensuring that they look to the future with more hope is the common duty of all states, of all of us. Moreover, it is their moral responsibility.

The world is in search of a reconstruction, a reordering, based on a notion of justice that stands not with the strong but with the weak. We as Turkey experience this scorching truth very closely. On one side of us is a Europe that has built an island of prosperity, while on the other side of us are people who have been massacred for more than 5 years by a tyrannical dictator.

While human dignity is trampled underfoot in Syria, to think that you can protect the island of prosperity you have built by raising ever higher the fences and barbed wires around it is neither moral nor humane.

To protect human dignity, great duties and responsibilities fall to all of us, but at the outset to the countries that produce the greater part of the world's gross product.

Today it is estimated that approximately 210 million people end a day without being able to reach basic foodstuffs in any way. In such an environment, ensuring sustainable peace and stability is nothing but a dream. That the developed countries, which leave no stone unturned on new global threats, feel no discomfort at 210 million people going to bed hungry, and increase measures so that this misery is not carried to Europe, clearly reveals one side of the humanitarian dimension of the matter.

On the other side of this human tragedy stands Turkey. Besides hosting millions of Syrians fleeing Assad's tyranny today, there is a Turkey that makes serious efforts and creates resources for the resolution of the development problems of the Least Developed Countries. Turkey has pledged 200 million dollars a year of support to the Least Developed Countries; exceeding this pledge, it has transferred a resource of 300 million dollars for the development of the Least Developed Countries.

Turkey's official development assistance, which was around 1 billion dollars in 2010, has now reached the level of 3.9 billion dollars. This figure corresponds to 54 per thousand (5.4 percent) of Turkey's national income, and by this criterion Turkey is among the foremost in support to the Least Developed Countries.

These statistics once again clearly reveal a truth. Under Erdoğan's leadership, Turkey has become the hope not only of the people of Turkey but of all oppressed nations and hungry people.