Aliyev says Azerbaijan will use OIC presidency to push Muslim unity
President pledged to promote reconciliation across Muslim world, while framing Karabakh conflict in his own terms
BAKU, Azerbaijan (MNTV) — Azerbaijan will use its upcoming presidency of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to promote unity and reconciliation across the Muslim world, President Ilham Aliyev said, ahead of an OIC summit Baku is due to host next year.
“We will do everything in our power to unite the Muslim world as a single family, put an end to all unnecessary disputes, and halt confrontations,” Aliyev said at a Baku conference, the state-aligned outlet Caliber.Az reported.
He said Azerbaijan would oppose efforts to divide Muslims and highlighted the role of religious leaders in encouraging peaceful coexistence.
He also praised Azerbaijan’s cultural contribution, citing poets and thinkers from Nizami Ganjavi to Muhammad Fuzuli.
Aliyev also framed the Karabakh conflict in his government’s terms, saying Azerbaijani cities had been “razed to the ground” and that “ethnic cleansing was carried out against our people,” with nearly a million Azerbaijanis displaced.
Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were indeed forced from their homes during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the early 1990s, a grievance central to Baku’s narrative. Aliyev did not mention the more recent displacement, in the opposite direction, of Karabakh’s ethnic-Armenian population after Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive — which Armenia and rights groups have described as ethnic cleansing, and which Azerbaijan denies.
He also accused unnamed “major states supporting Armenia” of having sought to prolong the conflict.
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