President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the World Government Summit in the United Arab Emirates, where he paid an an official visit.
Highlights from Erdoğan's speech are as follows:
"Firstly, I would like to thank El Nahyan for their hospitality. I am pleased to be here as an honorary guest. With the Türkiye vision that we have implemented, we are building the future of Türkiye. We are proud to have built a Türkiye that has grown in every field.
Despite the ongoing conflicts, migration pressures, and terrorist attacks around us, we have come this far without deviating from our path. In the earthquakes last year, we lost more than 53,000 lives. We have delivered over 31,000 houses to earthquake survivors. I thank all our friends who have not hesitated to provide assistance.
We could not have achieved these without the power and support of our people. Our reason for existence in politics is to leave behind a beautiful legacy. Just as the world is bigger than the five, a fairer world is possible. All people need this. Achieving fair and lasting peace is one of our goals. Our world is going through a dark period of crises and conflicts,"
President Erdoğan urged "conscientious" countries to support the UN agency for Palestinian refugees or UNRWA, hailing it as "a lifeline for 6 million refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine."
"We will never leave our Palestinian brothers abandoned, helpless, or alone," he added.
He will address the three-day summit, with this year's theme "Shaping Future Governments," which is bringing together state and government officials and representatives of international organizations, the private sector, academia, civil society, think tanks, the media and businesspeople from various countries.
Since a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, the Israeli offensive into Gaza has killed more than 28,000 people and caused mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in an interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
