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1995
Umut Foundation, Ankara
Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
National Education Ministry Deputy Undersecretary Mr. Ahmet Erdoğan, Search for Common Ground representative beloved Bonnie Pearlman, New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution director Melinda Smith and education manager Jean Sidwell who will be managing the workgroups, Prof. Dr. Ipek Gürkaynak from the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ankara University, who has made precious contributions at all times and has never withheld her efforts and esteemed participants,
We held the first of the Seminars on Reconciliation and Democracy in May last year here at the Umut Honorable Leaders Raising Foundation as the first event in our foundation building.
I am very happy to see here again many of my friends whom I was together at the last years event. Your enthusiasm in our appealing togetherness has been reflected more to us and become a mirror for us. Just like the building blocks placed one over another, I share with you the honor of laying claim to reconciliation and democracy and glorifying with you the pioneering of these concepts. And you, my friends, welcome all.
Reconciliation is to provide agreement among parties in dispute and to assist such agreement.
Reconciliation is to assist bringing solutions to disputes as an alone and no interest seeking third person. Reconciliation is to present solutions to the benefit of bother parties or people in dispute to solve their problems.
Undertaking the reconciliation mission, adopting reconciliation and peace and to survey such mission to the young is all to give them a joyful future.
Life full of reconciliation and peace is an honorable life and creating it and forwarding it to future generations is our primary duty. And, this is a yearning which can be reached by means of adopting the principles of state of law. In societies where law is nonobjective or weak, brute force prevails and chaos arises. In such societies, it is impossible for individuals to sustain an honorable life. And, this conclusively leads to dishonorable individuals and dishonorable societies.
Brute force is disproportionate with the phenomenon of being a human. Here, the task belonging to individuals is to lay claim to law with honor and perform duties under their own responsibility.
Our goal is to takeover the load of the judicial system in our country, and more importantly, not to feel the need for this system in many issues by means of reconciliation talents and thus to settle our problems between us. This does not mean that I, as an individual, and our foundation leave aside our desire for the state of law, but we just show the effort to settle our problems between us. Contrarily, we try to strengthen the trivets of the state of law within this institution. While doing this, we do not see the rule of law as a divine concept under the possession of only jurists and the judicial system. We see it as a goal that each citizen internalizes and for which efforts are shown.
Existence of the state of law means freedom of the individual. It means that individuals under this umbrella are made free. Lack of rule of state is simply to live with the fear that such freedoms can be taken from our hands at any moment. And this results in the prolificacy of fear. Instead of staying getting afraid, we have to walk even if we are frightened. Here, this three-day long seminar and the subsequent training and seminar on the concept of the rule of law are all means of expression of such a walk.
We held ourselves liable for bringing our pain to the agenda with the irrecoverable wound we got and pronouncing peaceful methods with our scream.
I know that the 2nd Seminar on Reconciliation and Democracy for which we have convened here today will be an important step in our goal towards conveying reconciliation talents and talents for continuing and developing peace to the young through you. If we are able to give our youngsters the desire to settle disputes between themselves through peaceful methods and make them gain such talents beginning from school age, I believe we will convince them in time that violence and carrying and using guns which are means of violence are unnecessary. While we raise our youngsters awareness on these issues, embracing them will be our honor and hope.
Our Foundation will provide participants written brochures and the book on this issue, which we have been preparing, during and after the seminar to make sure that information gathered during the seminar is put into practice and to make permanent that participants benefit from each others experiences.
If joint projects are developed at the end of such togetherness, Umut Foundation will be at the service of participants in realizing these projects and putting them into practice. Hope for our country is through laying claim to law and to raise leading youngsters for this purpose. I thank Prof. Dr. Mehmet R. Gürkaynak, the Founding Member of the Umut Honorable Leaders Raising Foundation, our Engagement Manager and my precious friend, who did his best to create this environment for the Seminar on Reconciliation and Democracy for which we collaborated with our leading educators to realize the above mentioned target.
I thank you all for your efforts in turning clash and dispute which is a part and even itself of life, from a bad, corrosive and relations-harming social phenomenon into a positive, constructive and development-bringing process. I salute you with respect and wish that the seminar passes successfully.
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