The 47th anniversary of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was celebrated on Saturday in an event organized by the Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) in Istanbul.

Halit Eren, general director of IRCICA, in an interview with Daily Sabah, said the organization has two main goals, one is to restore and preserve Islamic cultural heritage in Muslim regions in war and the other is to struggle with radicalism that is used to denigrate Islam and Islamophobia that is used against Muslims all over the world.

Eren said the OIC with the cooperation of IRCICA and other institutions carries out a lot of work simultaneously to preserve Islamic artifacts and keep alive Islamic culture in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Eren said the OIC works on projects to restore the historical structure in the walled city of Jerusalem and makes projects with UNESCO for damaged artifacts in war-torn Syria: "We send specialists to Jerusalem; they work on artifacts in the walled city. We make the same works for Syria and collect previous drawings of these monuments to be able to start projects to restore them after the Syrian war finishes. In other parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa projects like this continue."

Eren indicates the OIC and IRCICA started academic projects to battle the far-right movements and Islamophobia that are on rise in western countries like France, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany: "We run together with the United Nations on some projects about cohabitation of different cultures, against Islamophobia. We recently held a conference with the Council of Europe about "the image of the other in history teaching." We have prepared three reports about the resource of radicalism and hostility toward Islam and Muslims. They will be published." Eren emphasized that defining radical terror organizations as jihadist (a term that is often misused and ill-defined) by western media outlets is an effort of perception management to denigrate and discredit Islam and Muslims, and the Muslim World has to offer up a position on these issues.

The OIC has had success in unifying 56 countries. However, Eren says the OIC is an institution founded by countries and to be able to have great success the OIC needs the support and determination of these countries. Eren mentions that even if wars continue in Muslim areas, the OIC has concrete achievements in many domains."Is the United Nations successful in every domain? The U.N. is a big organization but the war in Syria continues. Can the U.N. stop the terror? Unfortunately we don't know who supports and who doesn't support the terror. By means of one of the most successful institutions of the OIC, The Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah pooled a $10 billion fund to support projects to fight poverty in Africa. This is a tangible achievement."

General Secretary Iyad bin Ameen Madani was the main speaker of the organization. In his speech, Madani said the OIC made important steps in social, cultural, economic, technologic and educative domains and continues to take on crucial duties for the resolution of conflicts like that in Syria and Palestine after the foundation of the OIC was in pursuit of the arsenal attempt of al-Masjid al-Aqsa on Aug. 21, 1969.

Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak and Abdullah Gül, the 11th president of the Republic of Turkey, also attended the organization.