Professor Abdullah al-Ahsan, longtime political scientist at the International Islamic University Malaysia and Istanbul Şehir University, endorsed former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s proposed Hormuz mediation framework in a May 21 commentary in Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. Al-Ahsan will be a featured speaker at the May 22 meeting of the International Peace Coalition.
Al-Ahsan considers Davutoğlu’s proposal—a joint maritime security force composed of Türkiye, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia to secure and temporarily administer the Strait of Hormuz—the most viable path out of the current standoff. The argument rests on what he calls “dual-acceptability”: these four nations have functional relationships with Tehran, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Washington simultaneously, in a way no Western-led force can. Tehran, he writes, does not view these “prominent Muslim-majority democracies through the adversarial lens of imperial encirclement,” and Saudi Arabia and the GCC have substantial economic and diplomatic ties with each.
The geopolitical asset of dual acceptability—coupled with Davutoğlu’s personal standing as a “scholar-statesman” with “deep conceptual understanding of regional equilibrium and institutional diplomacy”—gives the proposal, in al-Ahsan’s reading, “immediate intellectual credibility” when presented at the UN Security Council and to the international community.
