| May 27-29, 1994
Umut Foundation, Ankara Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
Speech Text
National Education Ministry Deputy Undersecretary Mr. Ahmet Erdoğan, Search for Common Ground representatives beloved Bonnie Pearlman and Stephany Koury, Lousie Smart and Howard Gadlin who will be managing the workgroups and esteemed participants, ILEM began contributing to and pioneering the development of reconciliation and the concept of peace in our region years ago. Our target was to found an association that deals with these issues after laying its base and turn it into a foundation afterwards. We took the first step by contributing to the realization of the “The First European Conference on the Science and Art of Peace and Reconciliation” which was held in Antalya two years ago and which 350 people (175 of whom were foreign) participated at and to the printing of the book titled "Barış, Uzlaşma Bilim ve Sanatında Avrupa’da Kim Kimdir” (Who is Who in Europe in the Science and Art of Peace and Reconciliation). Holding the preliminary meeting of the “Middle East Reconciliation Process” in Istanbul was another step. As can be understood from the foundation brochure, our last deplorable loss eight months ago canalized us to realize the establishment of the Umut Honorable Leaders Foundation. The foundation, in conjunction with Middle East Technical University, “Initiatives for Peace in the Middle East" and "European Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution”, contributed to the conference on “Reconciliation Processes and Methods in Middle East” which was held in Antalya by the end of 1993 with the participation of about 40 selective people from the Middle East. Finally, we organized the conference on the “Elimination of Environmental Disputes” on May 9-13, 1994, an event which was jointly held by World Bank Mediterranean Environmental Technical Assistance Program, Geneva-based “International Environmental Academy”, the “German Technical Cooperation Institute”, Republic of Turkey Ministry of Environment and our Foundation. The foundation has held this event and similar events for the young people. However, the Foundation is not only for the young, but it belongs to the young and its objective was defined as follows: OBJECTIVE OF THE FOUNDATION
Article 3: "To raise our young people who are the assurance of the future as individuals who are helpful to the development of our country and beneficial to the mankind by giving them the personality and talents that will allow them to lead in the footprints of Atatürk; to provide people to contribute to the implementation of the rule of law making them adopt it; to make them prefer peaceful paths in the settlement of disputes starting out based on our leader Atatürk’s approach of “Peace in Home, Peace in the World”; and, in this context, to teach individuals reconciliation talents (and talents for continuing and developing peace) and to make them adopt the concept of reconciliation.” I am sure that the “Reconciliation and Democracy” seminar for which we have convened 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. In our country, possessing and using guns becomes more generalized each passing day and what’s more, individuals are tempted in this issue. Although possessing an individual gun is even for protection purposes, it did not yield this result in any country. Unfortunately, in each of 35 houses where a gun exists, without ever using the gun for defending purposes, it killed any one of the family members as a result of daily disputes. Unnecessary to say, disputes at homes where there is no gun, no painful events take place. Statistics that I give are from the American society. When we, as our Foundation, wanted to make such study in Turkey, we saw that it is impossible to find such database in Turkey. This is surely an indication of our unawareness on this issue. Although we do not know what the situation in Turkey is, we know that problems should not be settled by means of violence or guns. Contrarily, problems flare up and leave behind insufferable sorrow and pains. Whether it is an accident, death by means of guns does not change this result. In this case, I believe this Foundation is the result of the fact that guns, in other words violence and its means are not useful in the settlement of disputes and that what must be stressed out and taught is peaceful methods based on this mentality. Our goal is to provide an honorable life in reconciliation and to forward it to future generations. And, this is a yearning that can be realized by the adoption of law and rule 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. Therefore, we held ourselves liable for bringing our pain to the agenda with the irrecoverable wound we got and pronouncing peaceful methods with our scream. While we raise our youngsters’ awareness on these issues, embracing them will be our honor and hope. I thank dear Bonnie Pearlman, Search for Common Ground representative, and Prof. Dr. Ipek Gürkaynak who has never withheld her efforts in the organization of this seminar. Under such emotions and thoughts, I wish that the seminar becomes successful and salute you all with respect. | 