Excellencies,

Distinguished Ambassadors and Consuls,

Esteemed Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honor for us, as MÜSİAD, to host you this evening at our iftar table. Ramadan is not only a time of spiritual reflection, but also a season of dialogue, empathy, and shared humanity. It reminds us that beyond politics and power, there are people — and beyond competition, there is conscience.

So I would like to welcome you once again with these feelings.

Let me first of all introduce MUSIAD for those who do not have enough knowledge about our organization.

MUSIAD is a non-governmental businessman association which has almost 15.000 members with over 60.000 companies representing more than 30% of Turkiye GDP and employing over 3M employees and actively working at 78 offices domestically in Turkiye.

MUSIAD along side is an international instution and it exists at 84 different countries with 99 offices over the World.

Therefore, we are widespread across the global landscape that actively monitors economical and political developments in the World.

So that’s about MUSIAD.

As all you know, over the past few days, the world agenda is quite hot and I would like to take this chance to say a few words about this.

The world is undergoing a critical period of transformation.

Power balances are shifting, international commercial relations are being restructured, and new alignments are emerging across the global landscape.

We can describe this moment as a threshold in which the old world order has faded, yet the new order has not fully taken shape.

To use the conceptual framework often expressed as “order – disorder – reorder”, the world is currently experiencing the stage of disorder — a period marked by uncertainty and the labor pains of an emerging global order. And at the very heart of this transformation lies our region — the Middle East.

Following the so-called Arab Spring, which destabilized much of the region, we have witnessed the Russia–Ukraine war, growing strategic competition over the energy resources of the Eastern Mediterranean, contestation over trade corridors connecting the East and the West, the unresolved future of Syria’s state structure and most importantly escalations between Iran and USA and Israel.

All of these indicate that many of the key variables shaping the new global order are converging and intersecting precisely within our geography.

It is therefore clear that this new order cannot be defined by a single equation. Rather, it is a complex system of interdependent equations, each influencing the others.

And naturally, there is no solution that will satisfy everyone equally or provide every regional actor with exactly what it desires.

The region remains, as it has long been, a dense terrain of competing interests.

For this reason, the answer cannot be found in previously repeated approaches that have consistently failed to resolve our challenges in this region.

Instead today, we must look to approaches that are capable of breaking old patterns and challenging the conventional thinking.

For decades, the region has been marked by fragmentation driven by our differences.

The Result? Is a Loss!

We lost the power, the unity, and we lost the authority.

Yet the path to a sustainable future lies not in policies that emphasize division, but in strategies that build unity upon our common ground.

We must set aside the grievances that stem from our differences and instead take pride in the commonalities that bind us together.

We share history, culture, collective memory, hardship, and hope.

If we are to be more than passive observers in the formation of the new global order — if we aim to be active contributors in shaping its foundations — then we must think together, act together, and build our shared future together.

We cannot resolve the issues of our region through imported solutions. Not again! We have attempted this path many times in the past.

While externally imposed remedies may satisfy some in the short term, they ultimately drive the region into deeper dead-ends; the so-called solutions we import become shackles upon our own feet.

At this point, we must focus not on the elements that divide us, but on the wealth of values that unite us. Every country in the region, in truth, possesses broad common ground.

For example, Islam. The vast majority of the peoples of this region belong to the same faith, and this is a powerful unifying element.

However, unfortunately, even such a strong unifying principle has, at times, been turned into a source of division through sectarian tensions and differing interpretations of religion.

This teaches us the following: Any unifying value we emphasize must not become exclusionary to those who do not share it.

In other words, yes — we should take pride in our belonging to Islam, and we should treat it as a basis for unity among our peoples. But we must not turn this unity into a threat or a tool of dominance over those who do not stand upon the same ground.

It is for this reason that certain political Islamist movements in the recent history of the region were unable to evolve beyond temporary experiments. They remained romantic and confrontational in nature and thus failed to represent the inclusive and embracing spirit of the Islamic faith.

What we must truly focus on is the global rise of irreligion and the growing trend of detachment from faith.

Humanity today is in need of remembering the shared creed of the Abrahamic traditions; the belief in one God.

Therefore, we must broaden our unifying platform and come together on the basis of faith in God. I believe this perspective is not only necessary for our region, but for the entire world today.

Today, there is a need in the world that is stronger than competition: Cooperation. We should not allow the security of one nation to be built upon the insecurity of its neighbour Or similarly the prosperity of one society cannot be erected upon the poverty of another. If we do not change our thinking I assure you that

‘There will come a day that we will see far more radical extremist coming out of Europe because of lack of decision making, trying to be politically correct or assuming that they know the middle east they know the region far better than we do. I am sorry but that is not correct’.

Türkiye is one of those only options in the region with the historical depth, institutional capacity, and strategic vision to prevent the Middle East from being compelled into imported or imposed solutions. Rather than accepting externally designed frameworks, Türkiye has the experience, legitimacy, and regional connectivity to generate sustainable and inclusive solutions rooted in the realities of the region itself. However, this needs a support!

In the new era, vulnerability invites pressure.

We must acknowledge that prolonged instability in the Middle East is not sustainable — neither for regional actors nor for global powers. Markets cannot function under permanent uncertainty. Capital avoids unpredictability. Investors require rule-based frameworks, not open-ended escalation scenarios.

Economic fragmentation is already underway. Trade blocs are tightening. Technological ecosystems are separating. Financial systems are increasingly weaponized.

If regional tensions escalate into wider confrontation, the cost will not only be measured in security terms, but in lost decades of development.

Therefore we must work together to avoid all what’s happening.

Thank you