Newly elected OIC Secretary-General Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed met with Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs Musa Kulakikaya on Thursday, at the OIC General Secretariat headquarters in Jeddah, on the sidelines of the 23rd Extraordinary Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers.
Ould Cheikh Ahmed expressed his thanks and appreciation to Türkiye for the confidence it had placed in him through its support for his election as Secretary-General, affirming his commitment to advancing joint Islamic action and strengthening the OIC’s role at both regional and international levels.
Kulaklikaya congratulated the new Secretary-General and expressed Türkiye’s support for him in discharging his duties in a manner that serves the aspirations and interests of OIC member states. Both sides also reviewed the distinguished relations between the OIC and Türkiye and ways to further develop and strengthen them.
The meeting came just hours after Ould Cheikh Ahmed, a 66-year-old Mauritanian diplomat and former foreign minister, was elected OIC Secretary-General by consensus at the same extraordinary session, succeeding Chad’s Hissein Brahim Taha, whose term formally ends in November.
OIC Secretary-General Meets with the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Türkiye
Jeddah, 27 August 2026
The Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), H.E. Mr. Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, met on Thursday, 27 August 2026, at the OIC… pic.twitter.com/h6FZpyHuLk
— OIC (@OIC_OCI) August 27, 2026
In his remarks following the vote, Ould Cheikh Ahmed said he was taking up the post with “a deep sense of the magnitude of the responsibility and the weight of the trust,” noting that nearly two billion Muslims were looking to an organization that is “more present, more influential, and more capable of serving their causes and defending their interests,”
He pledged that Palestinian cause would remain the OIC’s central issue, along with stepped-up efforts to combat Islamophobia and hate speech and to build broader international partnerships.
Ould Cheikh Ahmed brings more than three decades of experience spanning UN crisis response and diplomacy, having served as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Yemen from 2015 to 2018, as well as in senior UN roles in Syria, Libya, and during the West Africa Ebola response. He served as Mauritania’s foreign minister from 2018 to 2022.
The meeting reflects the diplomatic groundwork Ould Cheikh Ahmed is moving quickly to lay just hours into his tenure, with Türkiye among the first member states he engaged directly following his election.
As he prepares to formally take office, how he translates his mediation-heavy UN background into consensus-building across the OIC’s 57 member states will likely shape the organization’s direction in years ahead.
