Thursday 14 Apr 2016 - 20:13 Makkah mean time-7-7-1437
Istanbul (IINA) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday urged dozens of Muslim leaders gathered for a summit in Istanbul to end sectarian divisions in the Islamic world and join forces to fight terror.
He made the remarks while opening the the two-day summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which Turkey will chair for the next two years. “I believe the greatest challenge we need to surmount is sectarianism. My religion is not that of Sunnis, of Shiites. My religion is Islam,” Erdogan said in his opening speech, AFP reported.
"We should be uniting. Out of the conflicts, the tyranny, only the Muslims suffer," he said, adding the summit meeting could be a "turning point" for the whole Islamic world.
Erdogan lashed out at Islamic State (IS) extremists who seized swathes of Syria and Boko Haram extremists in Nigeria as two "terrorist organizations that are serving the same evil purpose.”
He said that the OIC had accepted a Turkish proposal to set up a multinational police coordination center for Islamic states to fight militants, to be based in Istanbul. “Muslim countries have agreed to work together more closely to fight terrorism and other crimes. We need to establish an organization to further strengthen cooperation in the fight against terror,” he said. “It would be appropriate to create a structure among OIC countries which would strengthen and institutionalize cooperation against terror and other crimes. With this in mind, our proposal for the establishment of an OIC police cooperation and coordination center based in Istanbul found acceptance.”
More than 30 heads of state and government as well as top officials from 56 member countries of OIC are attending the two-day summit with the theme of “Unity and Solidarity for Justice and Peace.” The opening session was also addressed by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, OIC Secretary General Iyad Madani and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.
In his speech, OIC chief Madani said that the pan Islamic body has put the fight against terrorism as it main priority but at the same time he noted that only 21 member states have so far ratified the OIC agreement in this regard. He appealed on Palestinian factions to resolve their differences in order to form a consensus government. He announced that the OIC is working with Iraq to hold the 2nd Makkah conference in order to achieve the reconciliation in that country, which is witnessing conflicts on more than one level. The secretary general appealed to the development of humanitarian work in the organization, and announced that the 14th session of the Islamic Summit will be held in Gambia in 2018.
In a speech, delivered on behalf of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the outgoing chairman of the OIC, Shoukry announced handing over the chairmanship of the Summit to the Republic of Turkey. In an opening speech, he briefed the efforts made by his country during the period of its chairmanship. Referring to the state of turmoil in Syria, Yemen, and Libya, he warned that conflicts are spreading at an alarming rate, and they pose a significant threat to humanity”. Shoukry noted that the OIC plays a major role in solving these issues.
HA/IINA
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