KUWAIT
Turkey has offered assistance to Malaysia and Indonesia to build settlement centers for Rohingya Muslims, the Turkish foreign minister announced on Thursday.
"Turkey will help [the two countries] about building settlement centers and provide material and technical support for infrastructure," said Mevlut Cavusoglu following the 42nd meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Kuwait.
The OIC’s 42nd Meeting Council of Foreign Ministers started in Kuwait on Wednesday and the two-day gathering was held under the title "Joint vision to strengthen tolerance and reject terrorism”.
Cavusoglu said the offer was welcomed by the two countries.
During his meeting with his Malaysian counterpart Anifah Aman, Cavusoglu said Turkey was ready to provide aid for the Rohingya Muslims in the Andaman Sea.
"The issue [of the Rohingya] should be handled in a long-term perspective and brought to the agenda of international agencies," Cavusoglu said.
On May 1, the bodies of more than 30 of migrants - most of them Rohingya Muslims - were discovered in southern Thailand, prompting a crackdown that led to smugglers fleeing and boatloads of other migrants then turning up on Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian shores, while thousands more remained at sea.
Cavusoglu also met with his Uzbek counterpart Abdulaziz Kamilov, Senegalese Foreign Minister Mankeur Ndiaye, and Maldives Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon.
