The international community faces a rare migration crisis. There are some 260 million migrants, over 80 million displaced persons and close to 25 million refugees around the world today. Their numbers grow every passing day due to economic factors as well as starvation, famine, civil wars, terrorist attacks and political uncertainty. Those people end up having to relocate to stay alive, feed themselves and find food for their children – instead of finding a better job or improving their living standards. Unfortunately, those hopeful ventures frequently result in death. Some 20,000 people – most of them women and children – have lost their lives in the Mediterranean since 2013. Thousands of innocent people have died in the heat of the Sahara Desert. Indeed, there is great suffering behind what we describe as “the refugee crisis” in general terms. The dead bodies of young children, which washed up on beaches, showed the world that this problem can be ignored no longer. I do not point out those facts as the president of a country located far from conflict zones and irregular migration routes; I highlight them as the president of Türkiye, which, according to UN data, hosts more asylum seekers than any other country in the world.

The question of refugees is one of the most serious challenges that the international system faces today. That crisis, like many others, deepens due to conflicts of interests between states, the weakness of international institutions and, most fundamentally, the UN’s ineffectiveness. We face today the greatest challenge of refugees since the end of World War II. For that reason, this is a time when the reform process for the UN’s restructuring is critically important.

Complete isolation is not the way to end the raging crisis in our neighborhood. The real solution is to ensure that their native lands are liberated from violence without further delay.

Complete isolation is not the way to end the raging crisis in our neighborhood. The real solution is to ensure that their native lands are liberated from violence without further delay. It requires new opportunities to secure the political and economic future of these communities and to ensure that a new government that listens to the people comes to power. Once we accomplish these goals, people will have no reason to end up within our borders or at Europe’s doorstep. Any step taken without understanding the root cause of the refugee question and developing relevant solutions will lead to nothing but fresh images that inflict severe wounds on humanity’s conscience.

The international community, starting with the developed nations, failed the test of recent crises in Syria and Iraq. They had failed in the Balkans, too, in the past. Nowadays, they are making the same mistakes regarding Palestine. I am confident that we can implement a plan, in light of lessons learned, capable of stopping the fighting and adapting to the region’s historical, cultural, religious and sectarian realities. Türkiye supports and will continue to support all efforts geared toward that goal.