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Stronger relationships between Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey can promote world peace
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has to work with Malaysian PM Anwar and President Jokowi to show Europe how one exits from a destructive conflict that can literally end human civilization if nuclear weapons are used.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (left) and President Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo attend an honor-guard ceremony at the presidential palace in Bogor, West Java, on Jan. 9, 2023.
(AFP/Adek Berry)
T
he recent visit of Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to Indonesia to meet with his counterpart President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of Indonesia was both important and strategic in three ways. They affirmed the obvious, that Indonesia and Malaysia do have a “special relationship”.
But more importantly they opened the way for other countries who are already a part of the ASEAN process, such as Turkey, all of whom can jointly pioneer new ways of finding solutions to global peace, notably the most-important current global peace issue, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has triggered Japan to double its defense spending between 2022-2027 for the first time since the end of World War II in 1945.
Should this dyad continue to become even more toxic than it already is, the whole Asia-Pacific would be on the most extreme alert. No amount of goodwill between Indonesia and Malaysia alone can show the way forward. Why? China, India, Russia, North Korea and the United States are all nuclear-weapons states with conflicting claims on what should be their roles in the world’s most-populous continent.
If anything, with each passing day, the animosity between Russia and Ukraine, not excluding Belarus, of which President Alexander Lukashenko is the leader and is on the side of President Vladimir Putin, has become extremely acute and lethal. This is precisely because Russia is a nuclear weapon state that has threatened on numerous occasions to use various munitions loaded with fissile materials.
When Malaysia and Indonesia are closer in their “special relationship”, as both nations speak almost the same language, it is a lesson for the pan-Slavic nations of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus that also understand each other linguistically up to 62 percent to stop the dehumanizing violence immediately.
The reach of Malaysia and Indonesia alone is not enough to cause the aggrieved parties to cease and desist from these mindless aggressions. Turkey, more specifically, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has to work with PM Anwar and President Jokowi to show Europe how one exits from a destructive conflict that can literally end human civilization if nuclear weapons are used.
Thus, granted that Indonesia and Malaysia do have a good relationship with Turkey, of which the latter is a sectoral partner of ASEAN, more rather than less can be done to foster world peace. It is with this hope that all should embrace the arrival of 2023 not with "fear" lest the psychosis become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, back to why the visit of Anwar to meet Jokowi is of critical importance.
