Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed the 4th High-Level Group Meeting of the Alliance of Civilizations Initiative at Çırağan Palace in Istanbul on Monday, framing the UN-backed effort as the defining peace project of the 21st century.
Erdoğan argued that today's world demands bridging divisions among cultures and faiths, and that the high-level group's newly completed report, established under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, would serve as a long-term reference document for those efforts.
He portrayed Türkiye as a natural embodiment of the initiative, pointing to its status as a secular, majority-Muslim democracy in EU accession talks. He said Türkiye's eventual EU membership would demonstrate that cultural and religious polarization is largely artificial, and that societies with differing histories can unite around shared human values.
Erdoğan also warned that injustice, fear, and suspicion fuel hatred and intolerance globally, calling for urgent action to improve relations between the Islamic world and the West. He described the initiative's goals as building a paradigm of mutual respect and forming a broad international coalition to strengthen ties between communities and states.
The released report outlined proposed measures covering education, youth, migration, and media.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in November 2006, in its own words.