Erdogan awarded King Faisal prize for service to Islam

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the winner of this year's King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam, the prize committee announced yesterday. The prizes, known as the "Arab Nobels," are awarded to people for their service to the Islamic world and Islam as well as mathematicians, chemists, physicists and biologists. Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a Turkish scholar, congratulated Erdogan on the honor, saying, "Seeing the name of our premier among the candidates was exciting. This is the result of Prime Minister Erdogan's exceptional success."