Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has accepted his proposal to create a multinational police center based in Istanbul. Seeking the lead role in uniting some 1.7 billion Muslims under Ankara’s command, Erdogan urged the IOC delegates at the summit to overcome internal differences in Islam.
The plan, with Erdogan behind it, sounds like a resurrection of Pan-Islamism. However, the political divides in the Islamic world make the promise of a return to what can be termed as former-Ottoman glory quite difficult. Ankara has been accused by many international entities of inadequately addressing the global terror threat. Russian President Putin stated on Thursday that Turkey’s leadership “collaborates with the radicals.”
Addressing the summit, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman appeared to lash out at Tehran, without naming the Islamic Republic. He denounced “flagrant interference in the affairs of several Islamic countries… instigating sedition and divisions, inciting sectarianism and using armed militia to undermine our security.” Turkey has been inching closer to an alliance with Saudi Arabia, and the underlying interest is to see an Assad-free Syria. While the effort to create an Islamic global policing body can be applauded, the Saudi-Turkish alliance goes against Iranian interests in the region, and until Iran is on board, an effective plan cannot be made to counter terrorism.
While the details of the new Islamic anti-terror police force are yet to be made public, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is already calling to “liberate all Islamic lands under occupation”, especially Palestine. Under the Turkish PM’s plan, the “liberation” of Muslims besides Palestine should also take place in Crimea and the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Though, how Ukraine can be considered an Islamic region, and to what extent Turkey may want to face-off with Russia, is something that many Islamic countries will not want to be a part of.
At the Islamic summit some leaders like Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi were notable by their absence. Turkey’s relations with Egypt have been sour since 2013 over the ousting of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, a close ally of Ankara, while ties with Amman are being tested by differences over Syria.
Yet, an Islamic police agency can function on some basic issues, like intelligence sharing and communication. The Syrian crisis and ISIS in Iraq are not the only conflicts to be resolved. Boko Haram in Nigeria and ISIS’ tentacles spreading to Indonesia and the Phillipines are just two manifestations of religious terrorism that such an agency could address. But even this requires that Muslim countries leave put aside differences and not see the agency as a way to achieve individual national interest but to provide collective security. And thus a Muslim version of NATO may not be possible.http://nation.com.pk/editorials/16-Apr-2016/islamic-interpol
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