Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called for reform of the United Nations Security Council based on fairer representation of member states, and urged countries that have not recognised Palestine to reconsider their positions in a speech before the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Erdogan calls for Security Council restructuring
Erdogan said restoring confidence in the United Nations required changing the structure of the Security Council, arguing that tying the will of more than 190 countries to decisions by five permanent members was neither fair nor conducive to confidence in the international system. The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain hold permanent seats on the council and have veto power.
He added that the international organisation, founded to protect future generations from war and preserve international peace and security, had failed to fulfil that purpose as required. He cited conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Russia, Myanmar, Darfur, Iran and Lebanon, saying the world had seen more than 60 wars over the past year.
The Turkish president focused his speech on the war in Gaza, saying developments there had exposed the limits of the international system's ability to stop conflicts and protect civilians. He said 74,000 people, most of them children and women, had been killed in Gaza over the past three years, holding the Israeli forces responsible for their deaths, while residents of the territory were still searching for their relatives among the rubble, according to him.
Turkish criticism of the handling of the war in Gaza
Erdogan described what was happening in Gaza as evidence of the United Nations' inability to fulfil its mission of protecting peace and security. He also accused the Israeli government of continuing to violate the ceasefire that, he said, had been reached in 2025 under the leadership of US President Donald Trump, and called for greater pressure on it to fulfil its commitments.
He said Gaza had become home to the world's largest number of children with amputations, using strong descriptions of the war and its humanitarian consequences. He added that the Palestinian resistance movement had agreed to move to the second phase of the peace plan, while the Israeli government refused to end the presence of its forces and its policies on the ground, according to his account.
Erdogan criticised the absence of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from the General Assembly meetings for the second consecutive year, stressing that Turkey would continue to present the Palestinians' position and defend their right to a free and sovereign state from the United Nations podium. He urged countries that had not yet recognised Palestine to take that step, saying attempts to prevent its establishment would fail.
Calls to recognise Palestine and rebuild Gaza
He also called for the immediate start of rebuilding the Gaza Strip and for greater international pressure to ensure its implementation and support a political process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Erdogan's speech came after he published an article the same day setting out a more detailed vision for Security Council reform and calling for the abolition of the veto privilege rather than expanding the number of countries that possess it.
He said adding new permanent members would not address the concentration of decision-making power, but would expand the existing privilege-based structure. The Turkish president proposed establishing a Security Council with no permanent members, with the General Assembly electing its members on a rotating basis for fixed terms.
Under his proposal, countries seeking to renew their membership would have to win the confidence of a majority of member states again through elections. He also called for strengthening the General Assembly's powers and increasing the Security Council's accountability to it, noting that economic, political and technological changes had created new centres of power that international institutions had not matched at the same pace.
Turkish proposal for an elected Security Council
He pointed to Asia's growing economic weight and African countries' demand for representation commensurate with the continent's capabilities, alongside the rising prominence of developing countries' priorities in international debates.
Erdogan said pandemics, energy crises, disrupted supply chains and regional conflicts had shown that leaving the handling of global crises to the will of a limited number of capitals was no longer consistent with international realities. He stressed that Turkey would continue supporting efforts to restrict the veto, give elected members greater weight and strengthen the role of the General Assembly.
