Date: London, Jan. 17, 1946.

Time: 3 p.m.

That Thursday afternoon, the doors of Church House in Westminster opened to representatives of a new international order that was only beginning to take shape.

London, a city that had spent six years under the shadow of air-raid sirens, blackouts and German bombers, was still bearing the scars of war. Much of Europe lay in ruins. Berlin had fallen. Hitler was dead. Atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Second World War was over. But the smoke of war had barely cleared.

Against this backdrop, at 3 p.m. that day, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) met for the first time.

The official U.N. records still list the venue in those same words: Church House, Westminster, London.

The meeting was opened by Australia's Norman Makin, serving as provisional president.

At the heart of the system were the five permanent powers we now simply call the P5: The United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom and France.

There was no famous glass tower in New York yet, no world-famous horseshoe table of the Security Council or General Assembly Hall. There were no 193 flags flying along the East River. But the skeleton of the international order we are still debating today was already there.

At that first meeting in Church House, the Council was largely concerned with establishing the rules by which it would operate. Provisional rules of procedure, the presidency and the Council's working methods were discussed. The Military Staff Committee and arrangements under Article 43 of the U.N. Charter were also among the early items on the agenda. The UNSC's first resolution would come eight days later, on Jan. 25, 1946.

Yet behind all those procedures stood a much larger question: How could the world prevent another war like this from ever happening again?

There was one simple answer: Put the world's most powerful states around the same table. And give them greater authority than the others.

Today, the veto is perhaps the most controversial feature of the system. But in the logic of 1945, the veto was also the price of keeping the great powers inside the new organization.

The collapse of the League of Nations was still fresh in everyone's memory. The new system could not be allowed to suffer the same fate. The great powers had to be kept not outside the table, but at it. That was the logic. And for that particular moment in history, it was understandable, because their world was not our world.

The global population was around 2.5 billion. Much of Africa remained under colonial rule. India was not yet independent. Germany and Japan were the defeated powers of the war. The Soviet Union existed. And China's seat at the United Nations was held not by today's People's Republic of China, but by the Republic of China. The world's economic, political and demographic center of gravity was somewhere entirely different.

And one fact must be acknowledged: For all its flaws, the system that emerged from 1945 passed an extraordinary test.

The Cold War began. The Berlin Blockade followed. The Korean War erupted. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, humanity came terrifyingly close to nuclear catastrophe. There was Vietnam and Afghanistan. Washington and Moscow confronted one another, directly or indirectly, across almost every region of the globe.

The UNSC was repeatedly paralyzed. The veto was repeatedly used. The U.N. did not prevent every war. But after 1945, there was no Third World War.

The mechanism that kept the five major powers within the same system provided, at the very least, a diplomatic channel and a platform for contact in the bipolar nuclear age.

Then came 1991. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Warsaw Pact disappeared. The bipolar world came to an end.

That, in my view, was the U.N.'s great historic opportunity: the system could have reinvented itself, because the world that had produced the 1945 order no longer existed.

But while the world changed, the table did not.

The Russian Federation took the Soviet Union's seat. The P5 remained. The veto remained. The privileges of 1945 remained.

Perhaps 1991 was not merely the end of the Soviet Union. It was the moment when the world order created in 1945 should have begun to rethink itself.

It did not, and part of the price we are paying today began there.

80 years later, same question

Now fast-forward the calendar. Sept. 22, 2026. This time, we are not in London, but in New York. The 81st session of the UNGA begins.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is at the podium. And in just a few words, Erdoğan identifies the fundamental contradiction of the system created 80 years earlier at Church House: "The world is bigger than five.”

In his 2026 address, he made the argument even more explicit. He said that a system in which the will of more than 190 countries is subject to the will of just five cannot be considered fair and cannot inspire confidence.

In the same speech, he argued that although the U.N. had been established 81 years earlier to maintain international peace and security, it had become increasingly unable to fulfill that responsibility.

Erdoğan's objection is not new. For years, he has been pointing to the same fault line. Over time, however, his language has developed into a broader political thesis: "The world is bigger than five.” And its companion: "A Fairer World Is Possible.”

The point is not opposition to five particular countries. It is not about removing the United States from the system. It is not about excluding China. It is not about denying Russia's power. Nor is it about rejecting the historical weight of Britain or France.

The question is much more fundamental: Can the distribution of power established in 1945 continue to serve as the governing model of the world in 2026?

193 flags, five vetoes

Walk into the UNGA today, and you see 193 states.

Move into the UNSC, where the most critical decisions concerning international peace and security are taken, and you enter a very different world.

Africa has more than 50 U.N. member states. Not one has a permanent seat on the UNSC. Latin America has none. India, Japan and Germany have none. The Islamic world has no permanent representative. Yet the core power structure created in the aftermath of the Second World War remains in place.

The U.N. therefore contains two different worlds within the same institution.

The logic of the UNGA says: States possess sovereign equality.

The architecture of the UNSC reminds us of a different reality: Some states possess vastly greater authority than others.

This is the contradiction Erdoğan has been highlighting for years.

Reduce it to numbers and the picture becomes even more striking: 193 flags but 15 UNSC members. Five permanent members. Five veto powers.

And now we come to perhaps the most remarkable feature of the system.

Under Article 108 of the U.N. Charter, changing the Charter requires more than approval of two-thirds of the UNGA. For an amendment to enter into force, it must also be ratified by two-thirds of U.N. member states, including all five permanent members of the UNSC.

In other words, the system effectively tells you: If you want to change the privileges of the five, you must first persuade the five.

Sometimes one article is enough to explain why U.N. reform has been debated for three decades without reaching a definitive conclusion: Article 108. The key to changing the system remains in the pockets of those who hold the greatest privileges within that system.

UN has changed before

There is an important and often forgotten detail here. The structure of the Security Council is not sacred scripture. It has been changed before.

In 1963, amendments to Articles 23 and 27 of the U.N. Charter were adopted; they entered into force in 1965. The UNSC was expanded from 11 members to 15.

In other words, the system once acknowledged that the world had changed.

Look closely: The number of elected members increased, but the structure of the permanent five did not change. And therein lies one of the great historical ironies of today's debate.

In the 1960s, the U.N. recognized that the world had changed. But it stopped that change at the door.

The room grew larger. The head table remained the same.

Erdoğan's objection resonates

Erdoğan is not the only leader calling for UNSC reform. The debate predates Türkiye's campaign by decades.

The G4 – Germany, Japan, India and Brazil – advocates expanding both permanent and non-permanent membership. Other countries argue that creating additional permanent seats would merely create additional privileges.

There is no single prescription on which everyone agrees, but an increasing number of countries share the same diagnosis: The present structure does not adequately represent today's world.

The 2026 co-chairs' document on U.N. reform negotiations itself points to growing support for greater African representation on the Security Council and identifies addressing the historical injustice toward Africa as one of the priorities of reform.

This is where Erdoğan's political message stands out. He distilled an issue that diplomats have debated in hundreds of pages of documents for decades into five words that anyone can understand: The world is bigger than five.

In diplomacy, sometimes one sentence can do what hundreds of pages cannot.

How does system change?

This is where we hit the wall. If the UNSC expands, who joins? India? Japan? Germany? Brazil? Which African states?

Would new permanent members receive veto power? If they do not, would we simply create a second class of permanent membership? If they do, would increasing the number of veto powers from five to seven, nine or 11 make the system even more dysfunctional? Should the veto be abolished altogether? Or should its use be restricted in exceptional circumstances involving war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity?

This is where the knot tightens. Almost everyone talks about reform, but they also prefer a reform that does not diminish their own power.

An old rule of international politics applies here too: States speak in principles. But when the discussion reaches the chairs around the table, power begins to speak.

The greatest danger facing the U.N. is not that someone will lock its doors tomorrow. The U.N. building will still stand beside the East River. The UNGA will still convene every September. Leaders will still take the podium. Diplomats will still draft resolutions. The 193 flags will still fly.

The danger is quieter. The world may increasingly begin solving its problems outside the U.N.

States do not immediately abandon institutions that fail to produce results. First, they go around them. They build regional alliances. They create ad hoc coalitions. They develop their own security mechanisms. They turn toward alternative economic and political platforms. And one day, while the institution is still standing exactly where it always stood, you realize that power has moved somewhere else.

That is the real danger for the U.N.: Not collapse, but erosion. Not disappearance, but irrelevance.

From Church House to New York

Now return to the opening scene. Jan. 17, 1946. London, Church House. 3 p.m.

Representatives of a war-weary world are sitting around a table. Before them lies the terrible legacy of millions of deaths. And one overwhelming question: How do we make sure this never happens again?

Eighty years pass.

Sept. 22, 2026. New York, UNGA.

This time, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is at the podium. And another question is being asked: How much longer can this system continue as it is?

In those 80 years, the world's population has more than tripled. Colonial empires disappeared. Dozens of new states were born. The Soviet Union vanished into history. China became a global power. India, with a population of around 1.5 billion, moved toward the center of the world stage. Africa became independent. The center of economic gravity shifted. Warfare changed. Technology changed. Cyberwarfare, artificial intelligence, unmanned systems and competition in space joined nuclear weapons as defining features of international security.

But the five chairs from Church House remained. Perhaps that is the essence of the issue.

The order created in 1946 did not become outdated because it was inherently wrong. It became outdated because the world for which it had been designed no longer exists.

Back then, the challenge was to bring the great powers around the same table. Today, the challenge is to give the rest of the world a meaningful place at that table.

That is the question at the heart of Erdoğan's thesis that "A Fairer World Is Possible”: How much longer can the world of 2026 be governed through the power map of 1945?

If that question remains unanswered, history will eventually provide its own answer.

No international order survives on treaties alone. It survives through legitimacy, a sense of justice, and representation. And it survives through its ability to change.

The doors of Church House opened to create a new international order. Eighty years later, it is as though the same question is still waiting outside those doors: Must the world continue to fit the table? Or is it finally time for the table to fit the world?

This is where Erdoğan's long-standing phrase, "The world is bigger than five,” acquires its deeper meaning.

Because the issue is not about overturning five chairs. It is about making the table bigger. Perhaps the question that will define the U.N.' s new era is not simply who gets to sit at that table.

The larger question is this: As the world changes, can the U.N. change with it?

Or will it one day discover that, while trying to preserve the order of 1945, the world of the 21st century has already moved on without it?

Because history has demonstrated one lesson time and again: Orders that refuse to change do not remain powerful forever. Eventually, they simply become old.