The questions and facts raised by the Kuala Lumpur Summit

The Kuala Lumpur Summit, whose main theme is "The Role of Development in Achieving National Sovereignty," has been continuing for three days under Malaysia's hosting. While the heads of state of Malaysia, Turkey, Iran and Qatar are taking part, 18 other countries are officially participating at various levels, and a total of 450 Muslim thinkers, academics, scholars and opinion leaders from all over the Islamic world are also attending.

It must be said that this participation, especially at the level of leading opinion leaders, makes the Summit more important. Although the last-minute withdrawal of Pakistan and Indonesia, which had earlier announced they would attend at the highest level, particularly under pressure from Saudi Arabia, was one of the matters that marked the Summit, together with the participation of intellectuals and opinion leaders this development has confirmed the general views about the condition the Islamic world is in.

President Erdoğan formulated the Summit's quest around the question of how Muslims, despite all the resources, wealth, and cultural and geographical advantages they possess in today's world, could have fallen so far behind. Unfortunately, no one until now had come forward seeking an answer at this level to this vital question that has hung over the Islamic world since the 19th century. Among its many causes, the most important is of course related to the independence of the Muslim world. The Islamic world, which was subjected to colonial conditions after the First World War, had no leisure to pursue this question anyway. On the contrary, all the political systems had been established to perpetuate Muslims' remaining in this situation.

Yet today, what holds the Islamic world captive is not so much the colonial countries as its own rulers themselves. Unfortunately, because the Muslim world, which makes up a quarter of the world's population, cannot form a unity within itself, its weight in the world economy is lower than one tenth, and in the balance of political power lower even than one fiftieth. As President Erdoğan drew attention to in his speech, the income gap between the richest and the poorest Islamic country today has exceeded 200 times. In Islamic countries, which hold 59 percent of global oil reserves and 58 percent of natural gas reserves, 350 million Muslims are struggling to survive in conditions of extreme poverty.

The share of Muslims, who make up a quarter of the world's population, in global health spending is only 4 percent. While the literacy rate worldwide is 82.5 percent, in the Islamic world it hovers around 70 percent.

Muslims make up 94 percent of those killed in conflicts currently taking place around the world, because Muslim countries buy one third of all the weapons sold in the world and generally use these weapons against one another.

All these problems today make up the picture of the Muslim world's backwardness, and the biggest cause of this picture is no longer non-Muslims but, regrettably, the Muslim world's own actors and rulers. The most important parties responsible for the problem of migration and refugees, one of the most urgent problems the Islamic world suffers from today, are SA, Iran and BAE. Take a look at the geographies in the Islamic world that produce migration, and at the causes that create these migrations. In all of them we see the involvement of these three countries in the first degree. In the destabilization of the Muslim world, in matters such as the absence of freedom of thought and opinion in the Islamic world and the systematic violation of the most basic human rights, we again see these countries in the front rank. This being the case, there is actually no need to look for those responsible outside.

It is necessary to try to find solutions to these problems at every level. But first it is necessary to accept these problems as problems. A climate of dialogue to be initiated among the countries that accept them as problems should truly and sincerely give priority to the answer to the question of why the Muslim world is in this state.

The Kuala Lumpur Summit began as one of these sincere initiatives. While responding sincerely to this initiative of Malaysia, Turkey in no way considered it against anyone. On the contrary, when this initiative began five years ago, even though Turkey was already the term chair of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, it did not see this initiative as a search for an alternative against itself, and it took part. Sincerity also requires being humble. No one's greatness is diminished by responding to a beneficial call. Those who act arrogantly toward such efforts shrink both before history and before the ummah.

By spending an unparalleled and extraordinary diplomatic effort on undermining this Summit instead of attending the Kuala Lumpur Summit to which it was invited, SA has written yet another cautionary page in history. If it had shown this negative effort against India, the Kashmir problem; against Israel, the Palestine problem; against Myanmar, the Arakan problem would have been solved, you know.

What, I wonder, did it achieve by threatening Pakistan and Indonesia and convincing them to withdraw from the Summit, in order to undermine a Summit it regarded as an effort to form an alternative to the OIC, whose term chairmanship it holds?

Didn't it in fact show, by doing so, the need for a search for an alternative against itself? Didn't it at the same time also justify and accelerate such a search for an alternative? Is it aware of the Muslims' problems, which are by now well known and were also expressed at the Summit? Does it have a program of solutions to these problems? For example, within the Muslim world, in keeping with the claim to leadership it has taken upon itself, does it have a plan and program for unity, integrity and solidarity?

Or will it pursue its claim to leadership within the Muslim world through such intrigues, factionalism, and camp-building within the ummah? These questions will inevitably now be asked more loudly.