The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is an international organization founded in 1969, consisting of 57 member states, with a collective population of over 1.8 billion as of 2015 with 53 countries being Muslim-majority countries. The organisation states that it is "the collective voice of the Muslim world" and works to "safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony"; the OIC has permanent delegations to the European Union. The official languages of the OIC are Arabic and French. On 21 August 1969 a fire was started in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Amin al-Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, called the arson a "Jewish crime" and called for all Muslim heads of state to convene a summit. On 25 September 1969, an Islamic Conference, a summit of representatives of 24 Muslim majority countries, was held in Rabat, Morocco. A resolution was passed stating that "Muslim government would consult with a view to promoting among themselves close cooperation and mutual assistance in the economic, scientific and spiritual fields, inspired by the immortal teachings of Islam."

Six months in March 1970, the First Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 1972, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference was founded. While the al-Aqsa fire is regarded as one of the catalysts for the formation of the OIC, many Muslims have aspired to a pan-Islamic institution that would serve the common political and social interests of the ummah since the 19th century. In particular, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate after World War I left a vacuum. According to its charter, the OIC aims to preserve Islamic economic values; the emblem of the OIC contains three main elements that reflect its vision and mission as incorporated in its new Charter. These elements are: the Kaaba, the Globe, the Crescent. On 5 August 1990, 45 foreign ministers of the OIC adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam to serve as a guidance for the member states in the matters of human rights in as much as they are compatible with the Sharia, or Quranic Law.

In March 2008, the OIC conducted a formal revision of its charter. The revised charter set out to promote human rights, fundamental freedoms, good governance in all member states; the revisions removed any mention of the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. Within the revised charter, the OIC has chosen to support the Charter of the United Nations and international law, without mentioning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to the UNHCR, OIC countries hosted 18 million refugees by the end of 2010. Since OIC members have absorbed refugees from other conflicts, including the uprising in Syria. In May 2012, the OIC addressed these concerns at the "Refugees in the Muslim World" conference in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. On 28 June 2011 during the 38th Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Astana, the organisation changed its name from Organisation of the Islamic Conference to its current name; the OIC changed its logo at this time. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has 57 members, 56 of which are member states of the United Nations, the exception being Palestine.

Some members in West Africa and South America, are – though with large Muslim populations – not Muslim majority countries. A few countries with significant Muslim populations, such as Russia and Thailand, sit as Observer States; the collective population of OIC member states is over 1.9 billion as of 2018. The Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States was established in Iran in 1999, its head office is situated in Tehran. Only OIC members are entitled to membership in the union. On 27 June 2007, then-United States President George W. Bush announced that the United States would establish an envoy to the OIC. Bush said of the envoy, "Our special envoy will listen to and learn from representatives from Muslim states, will share with them America's views and values." As of June 2015, Arsalan Suleman is acting special envoy. He was appointed on 13 February 2015. In an investigation of the accuracy of a series of chain emails, Snopes.com reported that during the October 2003 – April 2004 session of the General Assembly, 17 individual members of the OIC voted against the United States 88% of the time.

The OIC, on 28 March 2008, joined the criticism of the film Fitna by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which features disturbing images of violent acts juxtaposed with alleged verses from the Quran. In March 2015, the OIC announced its support for the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Shia Houthis; the OIC supports a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The OIC has called for boycott of Israeli products in effort to pressure Israel into ending the occupation of the Palestinian territories. There was a meeting in Conakry in 2013. Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said that foreign ministers woul

The arms race between Great Britain and Germany that occurred from the last decade of the nineteenth century until the advent of World War I in 1914 was one of the intertwined causes of that conflict. While based in a bilateral relationship that had worsened over many decades, the arms race began with a plan by German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in 1897 to create a fleet in being to force Britain to make diplomatic concessions. With the support of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tirpitz began passing a series of laws to construct an increasing number of a large surface warships; the construction of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 prompted Tirpitz to further increase the rate of naval construction. While some British observers were uneasy at German naval expansion, alarm was not general until Germany's naval bill of 1908; the British public and political opposition demanded that the Liberal government meet the German challenge, resulting in the funding of additional dreadnoughts in 1910 and escalating the arms race.

Maintaining Europe's largest army and second-largest navy took an enormous toll on Germany's finances. Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, German Chancellor from 1909, undertook a policy of détente with Britain to alleviate the fiscal strain and focus on the rivalry with France. Under Bethmann-Hollweg, from 1912 onwards, Germany abandoned the dreadnought arms race and focused on a commerce raiding naval strategy to be conducted with submarines. One of the ironies of the arms race and subsequent conflict was that while the German battle fleet fought only one major surface engagement, the inconclusive Battle of Jutland, never threatened British naval supremacy, the commerce raiding strategy, the historic focus of German naval doctrine would endanger British merchant shipping and imports throughout the war. Britain had the largest navy in the world and its policy was to ensure the Royal Navy was at least the size of the next two largest navies, known as the two-power standard. Britain's economy was dependent on the ability to ship in raw materials and export out a finished product.

By 1900, 58% of calories consumed by Britain's population came from overseas, meaning that an inability to guarantee free movement on the seas would result in food shortages. Before the German naval challenge, British political and military leaders mused about catastrophic economic and political consequences if the Royal Navy could not guarantee British freedom of action. Worry about Britain's ability to defend itself became the focus of the invasion literature genre, which began in 1871, remained popular to World War I, was influential on public opinion; the first Chancellor of united Germany Otto von Bismarck had skillfully guided Germany's foreign relations so it was not attached to any other European power. After his departure in 1890, Germany's foreign policy drifted into deeper commitment with the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary and Italy. Friedrich von Holstein of the German Foreign Office convinced the new Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, to not renew the Reinsurance Treaty with the Russian Empire in 1890.

Bismarck had designed the Reinsurance Treaty to keep Russia from an alliance with France. Holstein had hoped that the lapsing of the Reinsurance Treaty would result in a closer relationship with Britain, competing with both Russia and France, which did not occur. From 1890 to 1897, Germany wavered between pro-British and pro-Russian policies, reflecting the incoherence of German leadership. In 1890, American naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan published The Influence of Sea Power upon History, the single most important work in naval strategy. Mahan argued that sea power was the deciding factor that allowed strong nations to thrive and impose their will on weaker nations, that the proper way to achieve naval supremacy was large-scale battle between fleets. At the time, the Imperial German Navy subscribed to the commerce raiding theory of navy strategy, but Mahan's arguments had enormous influence over subsequent German and British thinking. Translated into German by Admiral Ludwig Borckenhagen who supported Mahan's ideas, a copy of the book was placed in every German naval vessel.

Kaiser Wilhelm II subscribed to Mahan's ideas after reading his book in 1894 and sought Reichstag funding to implement them. The Reichstag funded four of the thirty-six cruisers that Wilhelm requested in 1895, none at all the following two years. Frustrated at being rebuffed, Wilhelm recalled Alfred von Tirpitz from his duties in the Far East to be the Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office in 1897. Tirpitz was a follower of anti-British nationalist Heinrich von Treitschke as well as Alfred Thayer Mahan's ideas on the primacy of battle fleets. In 1894, he wrote a famous memorandum section titled, "The Natural Purpose of a Fleet is the Strategic Offensive," dismissing commerce raiding and coastal defense, arguing that Germany must prepare for offensive sea battle to ensure its place in the world. In his first meeting with Wilhelm in June 1897, Tirpitz stated his case that Germany must confront Britain to ensure its place as a European power, he outlined a strategy that he would follow for many years: build a German navy strong enough that the effort to destroy it would open Britain to attack from Britain's French and Russian rivals, a form of Mahan's "fleet in being".

Tirpitz calculated that since the British navy was scattered to protect its possessions around the globe, "it comes to a battleship war between Heligoland and the Thames." Both Tirpitz and Bernhard von Bülow, Secretary of Sta

Kummuh was an Iron Age Neo-Hittite kingdom located on the west bank of the Upper Euphrates within the eastern loop of the river between Melid and Carchemish. Assyrian sources refer to its capital city by the same name; the city is identified with the classical-period Samosata, which has now been flooded under the waters of a newly built dam. Urartian sources refer to it as Qumaha; the name is attested in at least one local royal inscription dating to the 8th century BCE. Other places that are mentioned in historical sources as lying within Kummuh are lands of Kištan and Halpi, cities of Wita, Parala and Sarita. Kummuh bordered the kingdoms of Melid to the north, Gurgum to the west and Carchemish to the south, while to the east it faced Assyria and Urartu. Several indigenous rock inscriptions have been found in the region, all written in hieroglyphic Luwian, attesting to the continuity of Hittite traditions. In his annals, the Assyrian king Sargon II referred to the Kummuh ruler as'Hittite', several rulers of Kummuh bore the same names as famous Hittite kings of the 2nd millennium BCE: Hattušili, Šuppiluliuma, Muwattalli.

From the Middle Hittite Period onwards, the Hittite archives of Hattuša refer to a city of Kummaha, which might be identical to the city of Kummuh. Most of the information about Kummuh comes from Assyrian sources. In a fragmentary context attributed to the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I, the land of Kummuhi is mentioned as bordering the land of Mt. Kassiyari. Afterwards, nothing is known until the 9th century BCE. From the beginning of the 9th to the middle of the 8th centuries, Kummuh seems to have remained a peaceful tributary state allied with Assyria. In 866 BCE, Kummuh king Qatazilu paid tribute to Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II in the city of Huzirina. In 858 BCE, Assyrian king Shalmaneser III reported in his Kurkh Monolith that Qatazilu submitted to him peacefully after the Assyrian king crossed the Euphrates on a campaign to the west. A similar report is mentioned for another campaign in 857. In 853 BCE, a new king in Kummuh, Kundašpi, was reported by Shalmaneser III as being among the northern Syrian kings who submitted to him in the city of Pitru.

In 805 BCE, as reported on the Pazarcık Stele, the Kummuh king Ušpilulume asked for the assistance of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III against the a coalition of eight kings led by Ataršumki of Arpad. Adad-nirari travelled with his mother Šammuramat, defeated the alliance, established the border between Kummuh and Gurgum at Pazarcık. In 773 BCE, the same boundary was re-established by Assyrian general Šamši-ilu acting on behalf of Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV. Around 750 BCE Kummuh was attacked by the Urartian king Sarduri II who captured the cities of Wita and Halpi, made the Kummuh king Kuštašpi pay a tribute. In 743, BCE Kuštašpi was among the Urartu-Arpad alliance against Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria; the alliance was defeated but Tiglath-pieleser III pardoned Kuštašpi along with the kings of Melid and Gurgum. Kuštašpi appears as a tributary of Tiglath-pileser III in 738 and 732. In 712 BCE, after the Kingdom of Melid was dismembered by the Assyrian king Sargon II, the city of Melid itself was given to Kummuh king Muttallu.

In 708 BCE, Sargon II sent his army into Kummuh. According to the annals, Muttallu escaped but the royal family and the population was deported to Babylonia, settlers from Bit-Yakin were brought to Kummuh. Thereafter the region became a province of Assyria and was under the jurisdiction of the turtanu of the left, whose seat of power was the city of Kummuh. After the Assyrian empire collapsed, a city of the name of Kimuhu, certainly Kummuh, appears in a conflict between Egyptians and Babylonians in 607–606 BCE; the Babylonian king Nabopolassar captured the city and stationed a garrison there, whereupon the Egyptian army under the command of Necho II laid siege to it and captured it after a four-month siege. Kummuh gave its name to the classical Commagene. Several monuments with hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions dating to the kingdom of Kummuh have been found in the region, as at Samsat, Boybeypınarı, Malpınarı, Adıyaman; the one found in Boybeypınarı is the best preserved of them. It is made of several basalt dates to the reign of Šuppiluliuma.

The Malpınarı inscription is carved on a natural rock cliff and dates to the reign of Hattušili, son of Šuppiluliuma. An improved reading of ANCOZ 5 mentions the pair "Hattušili and Šuppiluliuma and son", which may suggest the existence of either a second Šuppiluliuma or second Hattušili. Ancient regions of Anatolia