President Erdoğan: History gives us the opportunity to embrace our past as well as build our future

 

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan opened the exhibition titled Pioneers of Modern Science - History of Islamic Science and Technology and made a speech at the closing ceremony of Prof. Fuat Sezgin Year at Istanbul Airport.

Highlighting that the history of humanity took its current form more from scientific developments than from wars, President Erdoğan said: “History gives us the opportunity to embrace our past as well as build our future. Never should we let it slip our minds that we are members of a nation that had built a civilization so great as to extend from Samarkand to Cordoba. Having transformed such cities as Istanbul, Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad into an abode of science and culture throughout centuries, the Islamic world can now achieve yet another resurrection. Our dear Istanbul, one of the main bearers of humanity’s collective experience spanning thousands of years, will hopefully also be home to the major breakthrough in the future. I believe that our brothers and sisters, especially our children, of all ages visiting the exhibition will see their perspectives of civilization broaden, deepen and enrich.”   

“ATTRIBUTING SCIENCE TO THE WEST ALONE CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY IGNORANCE”

Stressing that Muslim philosophers and scholars, starting from the eighth century, had conducted multidisciplinary searches and studies of a kind that had given rise to scientific thought, and obtained successful outcomes, President Erdoğan said: “Attributing science, with its past and today, to the West alone and ignoring Muslim scholars can only be explained, if not on purpose, by ignorance.”

The President continued: “It is impossible to write the history of civilizations without taking the Islamic civilization into account. In this spirit, we, as Turkey, have been working to undertake groundbreaking initiatives in science and technology both at the national and international level.”