Turkiye's ambassador hails shared pursuit of peace and collaboration

Turkiye's Ambassador to China Ismail Hakki Musa has hailed the great similarities his country and China share in pursuing peace and rejecting conflicts among different civilizations.

In an interview with China Daily, he said that both China and Turkiye are "heirs of big civilizations".

"They have almost a similar position, similar view, similar opinions on global issues," he said.

"This is a historical responsibility for us to move forward in this spirit, and to explore convenient ways of a larger and deeper cooperation."

In particular, he said both China and Turkiye favor peaceful solutions to any conflict, which "brings us more together".

The ambassador also responded to some of the widespread ideas of the late United States political scientist Samuel Huntington, who predicted that there will be major clashes among the civilizations, and that conflicts of the future will not be among ideologies, but civilizations.

Moral duty

"In order to avoid, for example, this conflict to be a civilization one, we have this moral duty of suggesting and proposing new ideas, new theories, new concepts," he said.

If there is no flexible solution, it may further lead us to a civilizational conflict, he said.

Musa praised "an effort in that direction" — the initiative proposed by China to build a community with a shared future for mankind.

This is China's desire to prevent humanity from getting involved in a major civilizational tragedy and conflict, he said.

Every country has contributed to the world civilization as a whole, he said.

"The question is that we shouldn't impose, we shouldn't install a kind of hierarchy between civilizational values.

"In order to avoid the theory of Huntington from coming true, we need to deploy more and more efforts at the civilization level.

"And I think that the Chinese initiative is a good step in that direction."