3rd Seminar on Leading and Education

September 28-29, 1994
Umut Foundation, Ankara - Berna Hall

Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
Speech Text


 

 
Dear participants,

Welcome to the Umut Honorable Leaders Foundation. Although I and my family began long before contributing to initiatives taken in line with the general objectives of the Foundation, our attempt to establish a foundation began one year ago from today as a result of a very sorrowful event. One year ago from today, we lost our Umut, but started our efforts to keep our hopes alive. Another force that led our efforts to keep our hopes alive was the names of three grand children, children, and brothers of Dedeman and Önal families, whom they lost before Umut: Berna, Onur and Önder.

Berna is a Farsi word and means young, entity full of joy of living. Umut Honorable Leaders Foundation is for the young. Our hope is to assist raising leaders bearing the strength and talent to carry the mankind towards better and prosperous days and showing efforts to provide the mankind an honorable life in peace.

Undoubtedly, such initiatives will multiply through you, participants; and affirmativeness, constructiveness and peacefulness which all stand for hope will gain their new leaders carrying their flags at local, regional, national and international levels. I believe that we today cannot feel the hope and honor of the days in which the Tenth Year March was first sung in our country. We need to regain this feeling and convey it to our youngsters. You will see when you read about the activities of our Foundation; in our one-year study, we showed efforts to disperse such honor which is our right not only within our country but also at an international level and especially in the countries in our region.

We cannot expect from others in a passive manner the protection of our honuor at personal, national and international levels. Any kinds of brute force and violence may arise benefiting from this passiveness of ours. Our Foundation is sensitive in this subject. Therefore, today, one year ago from which we lost our Umut who died because of a bullet, we put a scientific research/examination award for 1995 on the “Reasons for Individual Armament in Turkey”. We wanted to pioneer the examination and determination of the reasons for possessing individual arms. In the end, a gun which stands for the force to strike mortal blow is also a symbol of brute force and violence. We know that human honor can be provided not by means of brute force, but by adopting the concept ‘state of law’ and protecting the law.

Therefore, we are carrying out studies that will assist ensuring the rule of law and solidifying the faith in the state of law. We aim to locate our scientific researches that we have started and our training activities regarding this issue on sound grounds.

I depict the main framework of this conference as follows: to raise leaders. Yes, but what will be the objective that our leaders will lead to? This must be the effort of creating an honorable life to the mankind. My wish is that you incline towards this purpose with hope and raise leaders who make realization of hopes possible. Means of raising such leaders is education. Umut Foundation will initiate such a training program. I am sure that this conference will be pioneering these efforts of our Foundation.

I wish you success and salute you with respect.