Award Ceremony for the 1st Individual Disarmament Scientific Research/Examination Award Winning Contest on Reasons for Individual Armament in Turkey

September 28, 1995
Umut Foundation, Ankara

Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
Speech Text


 

Dear guest, my dear friends,

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 our Foundation, our attempt to establish a foundation began as a result of a very sorrowful event. Two years ago from today we lost my son Umut Önal. We lost our Umut. In this life without him, in which we faced eternal nonexistence, we wanted not to lose our hope and to give people hope with our faith.

Here while we look for him today, we do not want to bring to the agenda the irrecoverable pain and suffer we got, but we would like to contribute to solving social problems with peaceful methods and with the yearning for state of law. Another reason for our togetherness here is to thank you and those who gave us viability by sharing the objective of the Foundation.

A peaceful and prosperous life is the hope of all of us. We aim to keep this hope alive and to make it strongly turn into reality. Creation of a peaceful society is possible through providing rule of law. And this cannot be engrossed by only jurists and the judicial system. Rule of law must be an ideal for which every citizen has to show efforts.

We cannot expect from others the protection of our honor at personal, national and international levels. Any kinds of brute force and violence may arise benefiting from this passiveness of ours. Our Foundation is very sensitive in this subject. Therefore, one year ago from today we started holding award winning contests on “Individual Disarmament”, which include subjects such as violence, individual armament and their reasons. Our scientific research/examination contest on “Reasons for Individual Armament in Turkey” has resulted this year. Our new contest is about “Violence and Arms in the Youth”.

Physical power is God’s gift. This is true for individuals and also for other species. Power is raised by using tools. When considered in terms of species, mind is God’s gift, too. Using and developing tools requires mind; therefore it is unique to the mankind. Other entities cannot develop tools. And, gun is a tool developed by the mankind, which increases attacking power. Even if it is used for defending purpose, it is a kind of means of violence.

Violence is not God’s gift; it is something learned and it appears at optimum conditions. The society teaches every one of us how we will use violence against each other and to whom and under which circumstances we will use it. It defines traditions and rules for using violence. Using gun is a learned behavior just like violence is. Gun is a tool developed for use at optimum conditions by people who are violence prone. In that case, legalization of gun is the legalization of violence. Gun possessing and carrying licenses are legal evidence of such legalization.

The following can be said: “gun is used for defending purposes against violence; therefore those who are not violence prone may possess guns.” When our social conditions are taken into account, this can be deemed as a reasonable opinion. Then, gun license must be given to only such people. A person demanding gun license must be forced to have education for a specific time just like in driver licenses and he must be able to get his license after his peaceful character is determined by experts. This is our primary request from lawmakers. Our secondary demand is that they take very effective measures which will deter unlicensed gun possession.

These are intermediate measures. The main thing is to eliminate or at least minimize the need for committing violence and using gun which is its main instrument. For this purpose, we need to change our regional and social conditions. We need to grow generations that prefer to settle their problems through peaceful ways without feeling the need for committing violence. In short, we need to change our education system. Most of our Foundation’s activities are intended to change the education system, just as follows:

As you will see in the introduction files in your hand, Umut Foundation has contributed to peace at national and international levels by means of a series of activities for the last two years and also become the pioneer of the introduction, teaching and implementation of peaceful reconciliation methods, not only in Turkey, but also in Europe and the Middle East. Among these activities, 1st, 2nd and 3rd European Conferences on the Science and Art of Peace and Reconciliation, Middle East and Balkans Science of Reconciliation meetings, and education seminars on “Reconciliation and Democracy” which drew too much attention in our country can be counted. In addition to these, we have also started the following studies:

Indoctrinating people in our region the peaceful reconciliation methods to provide permanent peace can be one of the prerequisites, however it is not sufficient. People have to develop more positive approaches towards each other. Negative prejudicial texts about neighbor countries and people in the schoolbooks in our region are analyzed in a project which we have started to eliminate existing prejudgments in the Middle East and Balkans and we have been showing efforts to remove these texts from the schoolbooks by molding public opinion by means of the media channels in the countries in the region. The Foundation also held a “Middle East Media Conference” to develop its relations with the media and to inform the media of these subjects.

We believe that becoming familiar with peaceful reconciliation methods and preferring using these methods is a desired result. The protective umbrella of this result is state of law. Citizens being and staying peaceful against each other is possible under the umbrella of state of law. State of law is an umbrella which is not unconcerned with individuals’ rights and freedom and in which individuals adopt the ideal of state of law and make it to develop and prevail. A society composed of individuals, who know their rights, content, scope and limits of their rights and protect them by legal means and whose feeling of and faith in justice have developed, is one of the conditions for reach the target of “state of law”. And, this can be realized through education. To serve this purpose, Umut Foundation initiated the program titled “Education Related to Law”. The program which is intended for teachers of secondary education at the moment aims to bring state and NGOs together and make them to interlock under the roof of state of law with a stricter purpose, cooperation and interaction.

The prerequisite for the state and NGOs to come together is the development and strengthening of NGOs. Associations, foundations and chambers are our NGOs. When the history of the Turkish society is examined, such organizations from centuries ago, which conventionally existed within the society, can be seen. In our society which has such a long and rooted civil organization tradition, the thing that must be done is to keep this tradition and insight alive and to help their development and generalization.

Although public administration and business administration education is given in our universities, education for the management of more than 70,000 NGOs in our country is not given anywhere. Our Foundation initiated a development education program intended for the boards and committees of NGOs in order to contribute to the development of “civil society”, which is one of the indispensable conditions of democratic society, by strengthening the management structure of such organizations. Since these organizations will be able to use democratic channels more effectively if they gain strong management, relations between the state and NGOs will further solidify.

Today, we have convened here for our award winning contest “Individual Disarmament”. I thank the following precious jury members who have carefully examined works that are competing in this contest and whose honorary memberships to the Foundations make me very proud: Turkish Journalists Association Chairman Mr. Nail Güreli, Mr. Özgen Acar from Cumhuriyet Newspaper, Prof. Dr. Cahit Can from the Faculty of Law at Ankara University, Assistant Prof. Dr. Erol Çakmak from the Economics Division of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Bilkent University, Prof. Dr. Ilter Turan from the International Relations Division at Koç University, Prof. Dr. Mine Tan from the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ankara University, and Prof. Dr. Mehmet Gürkaynak from the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ankara University, who is the Founding Member of our Foundation.

At the end of the evaluations made by our esteemed jury members, within the framework of the scientific research/examination contest on the “Reasons for Individual Armament in Turkey”, which is the first of our “Individual Disarmament” award winning contests, Mr. Ali Yılmaz’s work was given the Encouragement Award and Mr. Kaan Durukan’s work was deemed noteworthy. I thank them in the name of our Foundation. 
If today eight million people are armed in Turkey and about that many or more people are carrying unlicensed guns and if violence and guns invaded our life that much and more and more pains are suffered each passing day, somebody has to say “stop, enough”. And that somebody is us.

I thank you on behalf of my foundation.

The ultimate and the most important thing with which we have to be at peace is the natural environment. For the purpose of making peace with the environment, our Foundation initiated the “Umut Forests Project”. Within the scope of this project, the field at the 35th km of the highway between Ankara and Konya was afforested in cooperation with Antalya Environmental Platform. Today, we will be starting the forestation of the field at 37th km of the highway between Ankara and Konya.