Addressing the AlBaraka Islamic Finance Summit, President Erdoğan said: “We say that the global system, with all its components, must be redesigned in line with today's realities. Our motto, the World is bigger than five, highlights the urgent need to change the system.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a speech at the AlBaraka Islamic Finance Summit in Istanbul.
“ISTANBUL HARBORS GREAT POTENTIAL IN ISLAMIC FINANCE”
Highlighting the importance of holding the Islamic finance summit in Türkiye, President Erdoğan said: “Türkiye, which has historically served as a commercial and human bridge between the East and West, has begun to play a similar role in financial markets. The Istanbul Financial Center, which we inaugurated last year, has become a symbol of our efforts and vision in this direction. International investors also acknowledge that Istanbul harbors great potential in the areas of finance and Islamic finance. The AlBaraka Summit will inshallah contribute to our efforts to upgrade Istanbul’s status as a regional finance hub to global scale.”
Expressing his belief that the summit will conduce to a better understanding of the ethical standards of the Islamic finance as a keystone of the Islamic economic system, President Erdoğan stated that the summit will also help the exploration of services and products markets related to the Islamic economy.
“GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS PRESENTED AS THE GUARANTORS OF THE GLOBAL SYSTEM ARE IN GRAVE WEAKNESS”
Noting that the world has been going through a profound transformation in recent years, President Erdoğan said: “The foundations of the economic, military and political system, established in the aftermath of the World War II, are being shaken more violently with each development. We can see it very clearly that the balance in the international system has been lost, uncertainty has increased, and chaos has become the dominant color of the world. Even before the debris of the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic could be lifted, the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, followed by the Gaza crisis that erupted on October 7.”
Pointing out that the mass massacres Israel has been committing in Gaza before the very eyes of the whole humanity for nearly eight months have exposed the incompetence of the global order and undermined the trust in existing structures, President Erdoğan continued his remarks as follows: “The inadequate and crooked character of the structures whose duty is to safeguard order in the world, first and foremost the UN Security Council, has been revealed once again. To be honest, no institutional mechanism exists currently in the world that would protect the oppressed, stop the oppressors, and prevent oppression. Global institutions that have been presented to us for years as the guarantors of the global system are in grave weakness.”
Stressing that Türkiye has been drawing attention to this situation for a long time, President Erdoğan said: “We say that the global system, with all its components, must be redesigned in line with today's realities. Our motto, the World is bigger than five, highlights the urgent need to change the system. This has become even more indispensable with the Russia-Ukraine war and the Gaza genocide. We must see and accept that today, when the world has turned into a massive village, borders and distances cannot protect us.”
“WE MUST ALL JOIN HANDS TO FORM AN INCLUSIVE SYSTEM”
Underscoring that peace and tranquility cannot be established without justice and that democracy and freedoms cannot exist without security, President Erdoğan noted that elites of the global system turn a blind eye to this fact.
Noting that every incident that occurs, every regional crisis, every bloody peace that is protracted throughout years, and every war in the face of peace remind everyone of these facts again and again, President Erdoğan said: “If we as the humanity want both ourselves and our children to live in a prosperous world, we must stop insisting on the existing system that constantly produces problems rather than solution. Instead, we must all join hands to form a more balanced, fairer, and inclusive system. The challenges we face actually leave us no other alternatives. Let me once again stress that we must all endeavor to achieve this regardless of what faith, culture or nationality we belong to.”
The current financial system, whose raison d'être is to support employment and generate values, has now turned into a structure that is independent of the reel sector and exploits it, President Erdoğan warned.
Pointing out that the system, feeding the income and wealth injustice as well as leading to artificial growth, is creating excessive pressure on underdeveloped and developing economies, President Erdoğan stated that the financial architecture, which is built upon debt and interest, fell short of taking the necessary steps following the 2008 crisis to eliminate the causes that triggered the crisis, and that temporary measures were sought for the management of the process even though structural problems of the system were apparent.
Noting that this further exacerbated the problems instead of finding a solution to the existing issues, President Erdoğan said: “At this point, anyone capable of correctly analyzing the process now acknowledges that the global financial structure is highly fragile.”
“THERE IS A FLOW OF WEALTH FROM THE POOR TO THE RICH”
Stressing that another chronic issue is the deterioration of the income and wealth injustice, President Erdoğan said: “So much so that today, wealth inequality has reached its historically highest level worldwide. The richest 1 percent in the world owns almost half of the total global wealth. The share the bottom 50 percent gets from the global wealth distribution, on the other hand, doesn’t exceed even 1 percent. In other words, there is a flow of wealth from the poor to the rich on a global scale. What these figures tell us is that billions of people from Africa to Asia are actually mobilized to enable a handful of parasites to enjoy a prosperous, comfortable and lavish life.”
It must be accepted by all that this system, which makes the poor poorer and the rich richer, cannot produce solution to our problems, nor can it bring prosperity, peace or justice to humanity, said President Erdoğan. “The Islamic economics, on the other hand, attaches importance to ethics, sustainability, social welfare and environment as well as economic growth and development. The part and parcel of the Islamic economics is Islamic finance, known in Türkiye as participation finance. Based on humanitarian and moral values, centered on risk-sharing, prioritizing social justice and aiming to create positive social influence, participation finance harbors the potential to appeal to the entire humanity.”
Drawing attention to the incentives introduced in Türkiye to encourage financial institutes to develop policies regarding Islamic finance, President Erdoğan stated: “Participation finance offers important opportunities for the development of the country and growth of the economy as well as for financial independence. It is important for us to make the maximum use of these opportunities. Our goal is to increase participation finance’s share in banking assets to 15 percent in the short term.”
