As a country with a busy agenda, our nation is forced to resolve within a single year matters that European states would need a decade to address. This necessity of rapid work is not limited to migration and asylum-seeker policies alone; we face a similar situation in many fields.

For example, many global matters such as the geopolitics of the Caucasus, the Syrian civil war, the issues of the Turkish Republic of Cyprus and Greece, Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean, the occupation of Palestine and the Israel question, the fight against terrorist organizations and the PKK, relations with the United States and the European Union, and the strengthening of the Organization of Turkic States are on our country's agenda. These topics are weighty enough to occupy a single country for decades.

I believe that, in addressing these matters, Türkiye should act with a more inclusive approach in keeping with its historical mission, rather than with the rigid and exclusionary attitude of the nation-state paradigm. This should not be reduced to debates about Ottomanism. The Turkish people have no problem with the republic and democracy; on the contrary, the AK Party is a political movement that democratized the republic and raised the country to European standards.

Today, Türkiye's development and growth are being watched closely all around the world. Our President's powerful representation of this mission and his challenge to the unjust order established by the Western world give rise to a special interest in Türkiye. Most of the nations that admire Türkiye are not Turkish; however, the roots of this lie in the West's centuries-long "Turk equals Islam" approach toward the Muslim world. The Ottomans, as the sole leader of Muslims, created a broad imperial culture in which different nations and faiths lived together.

This lofty culture of the Ottoman State is still remembered with respect today in many places, from the Balkans to Cairo, from the Arab countries to Africa. Even England, one of the historical examples of nation-states, maintains its relations with different nations through the system it created during its colonial past and develops policies centered on its own interests.

Much research has been conducted on migrants and asylum seekers in Türkiye, and one of the first studies on the truths that are mistakenly understood by the public on this subject was prepared by us. From time to time we took part in workshops on this subject with AK Party officials. The Republic of Türkiye is a state with tradition, and although it occasionally exhibits up-and-down attitudes on this subject, it manages to reach a rational footing.

We are aware that the burden of migrants and asylum seekers is a heavy one. The state needs to keep this subject firmly on the agenda during periods outside election seasons and to share rational road maps with society. The opposition's tendency to raise this matter generally during election periods and then forget it afterward does not contribute to the matter's resolution. For this reason, it falls to the government to pursue a more active policy during these processes.

I attended the presentation of the Migration and Diaspora Foundation's "Türkiye Migration Mobility" report. Two recommendations in the report presented by Foundation Chairman Recep Seyyar caught my attention:

1. Accelerating work permits: As Minister of the Interior Ali Yerlikaya and Minister of Labor Vedat Işıkhan have also stated, it is noted that work permits should be issued swiftly to asylum seekers working in sectors of vital importance. In this way, by bringing hundreds of thousands of workers within the tax scope, the exploitation of both the state and the workers will be prevented.

2. Determining the status of young migrants: It is emphasized that young people who were born in our country and completed their education here should be granted citizenship after school or have their migrant status regulated. Rather than sending hundreds of thousands of young people educated in Türkiye to Europe, putting them to use in the country's development would be a more rational policy.

Türkiye needs to address its migration and integration policies while also taking commercial life into account. Western states generally take in migration by selecting the most qualified individuals. Türkiye has the capacity to establish a more just order by blending this experience and its own accumulated knowledge with the experiences that Western states, and Pakistan during the war in Afghanistan, have acquired.

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