Erdoğan condemns Islamophobia, headscarf bans, rising intolerance

NEW YORK, United Nations (MNTV) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has warned that rising Islamophobia, discrimination against Muslim women and girls and xenophobia are emerging as serious threats to social peace.

Addressing the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, Erdoğan said the world was facing not only wars and humanitarian crises but also new forms of social and technological disruption that required a coordinated international response.

“Islamophobia, which is spreading like the plague in the West, is at the forefront of these issues,” Erdoğan said, adding that Muslim women and girls had faced greater discrimination in recent years.

He specifically criticised restrictions on headscarves in schools in some countries, saying such bans represented an infringement of women’s fundamental rights.

“Most of all, Muslim women and girls are subjected to greater discrimination in recent years,” he said. “We regard the headscarf bans introduced in schools by certain countries as an attack on women’s most fundamental rights.”

Erdoğan placed the issue alongside what he described as wider trends of xenophobia and cultural racism, saying all such forms of intolerance needed to be addressed.

“Rising xenophobia, cultural racism and anti-Semitism are also toxic trends that must be combated with determination,” he said.

Muslim women

The Turkish president highlighted the headscarf, an issue that has remained contentious in several countries where restrictions have been introduced in educational or public settings.

Erdoğan characterised such restrictions as a question of fundamental rights rather than simply a matter of dress regulation.

He said the world was changing rapidly and that humanity had “simultaneously begun to face new social threats,” identifying Islamophobia as one of the most prominent among them.

He also connected these concerns to the protection of children and the family, arguing that social policies should safeguard the family institution.

“Global gender-neutralization policies as well have turned into a siege targeting innocent children, alongside the family institution,” he said.

Erdoğan said he believed the family should be protected and described it as consisting of women and men. He added that Türkiye would continue initiatives aimed at protecting families and children.

Call for common rules on artificial intelligence

Beyond wars and discrimination, Erdoğan warned that rapidly developing technology was creating another challenge for governments and societies.

He identified artificial intelligence as a technology that was becoming increasingly difficult to control and called for common international rules governing its development and use.

“It is long overdue to establish a common international legal framework for artificial intelligence,” Erdoğan said.

He called for the acceleration of work toward a United Nations international convention on artificial intelligence, arguing that the technology required internationally agreed safeguards.

Earlier in the address, Erdoğan said the international community needed to adopt a “human-centered” understanding of technology and prevent new barriers from emerging between technology-rich and technology-poor countries.

He warned that “techno-polarization and digital hegemony” would serve neither the UN-centred international system nor its member states.

The call for a common legal framework also followed his warning about misinformation on social media. Erdoğan said disinformation had become another threat to social peace and that defending truth had become increasingly important.

‘World is bigger than five’

He also criticised the structure of the UN Security Council, arguing that a system in which the will of more than 190 countries could be overridden by five permanent members was not sufficiently representative.

“The world is bigger than five,” he said in calling for Security Council reform.