Turkiye to hold expert panel in 12 countries to push for UN Security Council reform

The Turkish government will be hosting a panel of experts from 12 countries which will discuss the urgent need to reform the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC), based on Turkiye’s long-held view that the current system is flawed and unequal.

In a statement by Turkiye’s Communications Director, Fahrettin Altun, the panel – named ‘A New Approach to United Nations Security Council Reform: A New Approach to Reconstructing the International Order’ – will host local and foreign participants who possess expertise in their respective fields.

The primary aim of the panel will be to identify and target the significant challenges which the international community and organisations have faced in recent years, and to point out how the current system of global governance was ineffective in approaching those challenges.

Through the discussions and shedding light on the flaws in the UNSC’s current system, the panel will essentially aim to push for a fairer, more representative, and more democratic Security Council structure. According to Altun, the series of panels could be the catalyst for the redesign of a new UN and Security Council, which would save the organisation from becoming obsolete like its predecessor, the League of Nations.

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With the last set of panels having been previously held in Italy and Argentina, this second round of panels will begin in Paris tomorrow. From then, it will continue in London on Thursday, followed by Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands next week.

South Africa, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Spain and Russia will be the next destinations for the panel, before the last one in New York which will be held in September within the framework of the UN General Assembly (UNGA).

The Turkish government has long been an outspoken critic of the UNSC’s system of holding disproportionate power amongst the five permanent members – the US, UK, France, Russia and China – which can veto any resolution, regardless of the number of member states which back it. Over the decades, that system has resulted in numerous catastrophes and a lack of Security Council action on the world stage.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political doctrine of “the world is bigger than five” has, therefore, popularly called for the permanent members of the UN Security Council to be rotated with other nations in order to have a fairer and more effective UN, or to come up with a different reformation.

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