President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for sweeping reform of the United Nations on Sept. 22, saying the bloc has become unable to fulfill its mission of maintaining international peace and security and urging changes to a Security Council dominated by five permanent members.
“If trust in the United Nations is really to be increased, what needs to be done is clear... The Security Council must definitely be reformed according to the principle that ‘the world is bigger than five,’” Erdoğan said at the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Erdoğan has repeatedly used the phrase to criticize the structure of the Security Council, whose five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain — have veto power.
“Let us admit that a structure in which the will of more than 190 countries depends on the whim of five countries is neither fair nor can it fully establish trust,” Erdoğan said.
He said the U.N. had been established more than eight decades ago with the goal of protecting future generations from war and maintaining international peace, but had failed to live up to those objectives.
“81 years have passed since the signing of the Charter. But humanity is still longing for the day when that strong will will come to life,” he said.
Erdoğan cited conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, Myanmar, Darfur, Iran and Lebanon as evidence of the international system’s shortcomings, saying more than 60 wars had taken place over the past year.
The president said the situation in Gaza in particular had exposed the limits of the U.N.-led system.
“In Gaza alone over the past three years, 74,000 of our friends — most of them children and women — have fallen victim to Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism. The people of Gaza are still searching for their loved ones amid the rubble,” he said.
“What this scene, which should shake us all, tells us is this: The United Nations, which was established 81 years ago to protect peace and security, has become unable to fulfill this task, or rather, has been made unable to do so.”
The Israeli government continues to violate the ceasefire although a peace agreement under the leadership of U.S. President Donald Trump was reached in 2025, Erdoğan said.
“Gaza is not only the world’s largest children’s cemetery today. It is also the region with the highest rate of child amputees in the world. Gaza is the most inhuman, most shameful concentration camp of our age,” Erdoğan said.
“Although the Palestinian resistance movement accepted the transition to the second phase of the peace plan, the Israeli government refuses to halt the occupation,” he said.
Erdoğan also criticized the absence of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from the General Assembly for a second consecutive year and urged countries that have not recognized a Palestinian state to reconsider their positions.
“Although Mr. Abbas cannot personally be here, we will, just as last year, continue to be the voice of the free and sovereign State of Palestine and make the Palestinian people’s struggle heard by the world from this podium,” Erdoğan said.
“We must begin the reconstruction of Gaza without delay. I urge you to exert greater pressure on Israel in this regard. Let everyone accept this: Attempts to strangle the state of Palestine will fail.”
