"We are just laying the foundation stone here," Gul (R) said of the Turkish-German initiative.

ISANBUL — Turkey and Germany on Thursday, September 7, launched a joint initiative to promote cultural exchanges in a bid to develop stronger ties between the Muslim world and the West.

"We are just laying the foundation stone here," said Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul while launching the initiative with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The initiative aims to further cooperation between the media and academic communities and promote exchange programs for students and teachers from both countries.

It also aims to help overcome cultural and religious misunderstandings and to combat extremism.

Gul said that the real burden of achieving the initiative's goals would be on civic organizations.

Spain and Turkey have championed an "Alliance of Civilizations" initiative to promote ties between the West and the Muslim world.

The Turkish-German initiative also underlined the need for the sizeable Turkish minority in Germany to better integrate into German society.

Germany is home to about 3.4 million Muslims, of whom two-thirds are of Turkish origin.

Bridge

By launching the initiative, Turkey hopes to be a bridge between the West and the Muslim world.

"A modern Turkey fully integrated in European institutions and sharing European values will become a strong argument in favor of a world where culture and religion no longer divide," said a joint statement.

Turkey is a predominantly Muslim but secular NATO-member country bidding to join the European Union.

A strategy study by an American think tank has recommended repairing and redefining relations with Turkey to help promote America's ties with the Muslim world.

The venue of the inaugural ceremony for the Turkish-German initiative had also symbolic import as Istanbul straddles the European and Asian shores of the Bosphorus strait, the geographical dividing line between Europe and Asia.

The project was named after Ernst Reuter, the respected German politician and Cold War-era mayor of Berlin who went into exile in Turkey while the Nazis were in power in Germany.

The initiative is also aimed at healing a rift created by Danish cartoons that lampooned Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him).

"The cartoon crisis... revealed an alarming degree of Islamophobic feeling in the West and anti-Western sentiment in the Islamic world," the declaration said.

Last September, cartoons mocking Prophet Muhammad were published by Denmark's mass circulation Jyllands-Posten, sparking furor in the Muslim world.

The insulting drawings were later reprinted by European newspapers on claims of freedom of expression.