PM Anwar Lauds SETA And ISIS Malaysia Formal Cooperation

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 7 (Bernama) -- Turkiye-based think tank, the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) and the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia will establish a framework to further fortify bilateral ties, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Anwar also praised the role of both institutes in shaping national policy discourse amid an increasingly complex global environment.

“I am encouraged that SETA and ISIS Malaysia will formalise their cooperation through a Memorandum of Understanding to be signed later today.

“This stems from a recognition that sustained exchange between policymakers and scholars matters, especially at a moment when decisions will shape outcomes for years to come,” he said in his public lecture titled Power Shift: Strategic Choices for Malaysia and Turkiye, in Ankara today. 

Anwar is in Turkiye on a three-day official visit at the invitation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as part of efforts to further strengthen the longstanding bilateral ties between the two countries.

Anwar said that SETA has, since its establishment nearly two decades ago, emerged as one of the country’s most influential think tanks, contributing significantly to the generation of ideas, testing policy choices and clarifying pathways for Malaysia to thrive in a demanding strategic landscape.

In his lecture, Anwar also drew attention to the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, describing it as no longer a war crisis but genocide carried out through sustained military action that has dismantled the foundations of society.

“Tens of thousands have been killed, entire neighbourhoods erased. Humanitarian aid has been systematically obstructed. Starvation, displacement and fear have been deployed not as collateral damage but as purposed instruments to commit crimes against humanity.

“Proposals, including the permanent removal of a people from their land, are advanced openly as policy,” he said.

Nevertheless, Anwar said both Malaysia and Turkiye have refused to treat this as inevitable or irreversible, while stressing that more needs to be done.

“Both (Malaysia dan Turkiye) have acted, delivering humanitarian assistance, mobilising diplomatic pressure and insisting that Israel be held accountable for violations of international law.

“Both can do more, and both can do so together. The task is to prevent atrocity from hardening into precedent, to keep humanitarian access open, to ensure that genocide is neither excused nor laundered through semantics, and to reject the notion that collective punishment and forced displacement can ever be legitimate tools of statecraft,” he said.

-- BERNAMA