Dünya Newspaper Saturday-Sunday Supplement Interview
August 2004
Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
1. Can you tell us about the establishment of Umut Foundation briefly?
Umut Foundation was established by Dedeman and Onal families in 1993. Originally, we had started our works with conference series on Middle East Peace Process in 1992. It was unavoidable to found a foundation and work for the benefit of the society after the death of my son Umut.
Although we are known as a foundation focused on Individual Disarmament, the basis for our foundations establishment is to raise our youngsters, who are the guarantee of the future, as individuals who embrace the rule of law, are sensitive to environment and humanity, and prefer peaceful ways for solving conflicts and who have the conscious of citizenship.
2. What are the activities of your Foundation against individual armament?
Individual armament is a social problem, there are serial of works that should be carried out to solve a social problem. We identified that individual armament is our social problem following carrying out the first in the world International Individual Armament Symposium. What should be done after this identification is sharing this information with the State and the citizens and convince them? This is what we did. We raised the publics awareness through various activities. We organize the following activities to raise awareness in the public for the problem: Purification of children from toy arms project, March of Silent Shoes carried out every eyar on 28 September Individual Disarmament Day, panels organized in paralell to award competitions, www.umut.org.tr web site that is updated every week and has become a news source. The society and State are now aware that individual armament is a social problem and they side with us for the solution. Presently our works on Toy Regulation, production, sale and use of gasous blank cartridge and noise guns still continue.
3. Do public, State or private bodies support you for activities you organize agaisnt individual armament?
In particular local administrations support us by both participating in our activities as a speaker and sharing their means with us. Unfortunately, we cannot receive support from other non-governmental organizations as much as we desire. As for private bodies, we accepted few times a very small amount of financial aid from them. Generally, the Foundation relies on its own income and when necessary, it is funded by Dedeman Holding.
4. What is the extent of individual armament in Turkey?
Abdülkadir Aksu, Internal Affair Minister, shared exact figures on individual armament in Turkey with the public at last. It was pretty difficult for us to reach such data before. These matters were not spoken about like a taboo. According to Aksus explanations, while the total number of corrugated shotgun with licence for having and bearing was 119, 542 until 1990 in Turkey, this figure increased to 1, 954,303 at the end of 2003. This shows us that armament grew 17 times in the last 13 years.
5. Gun is a symbole of strentgh and power in Turkey. Do you think it is possible to turn this opposite? How can it be prevented that even for a small problem people go for the gun, they keep or bear it?
Unfortunately, arm is seen as a symbole of power and statue in our country. It is difficult to change it but we can convince the youth through repeated trainings without giving up on this perception. İt can be taught them that it is knowledge that gives people power and statue, not arms.
State is responsible for life and property security of its citizens. İt cannot say that i cannot deliver this duty so i will arm the citizens and cannot transfer this duty to its citizens. Police force and justice should immediately gain the citizens trust.
6. Should there be amendment to law to deter armament?
Nothing can be solved with bans in a society but there is a difference regarding individual armament. It is difficult talk about a state governed by rule of law in a society where its citizens take up arms. Individuals should not be granted to arms by law as if it was a democratic right. Granting anyone who wants arm should be prevented and banned. It is a human who pulls the trigger and just for this reason, people and arms should be getting together as least as possible.
7. The rate of States armament is seriously high. What do you think about that? A big budget that Turkey spares for armament is in the same context. Does Umut Foundation do anything about it?
There are in total 638, 9 million light arms around the world, according to data of United Nations. 378, 3 million of these are held by the individuals, which is 60% of the total. Individual armament displays a worse picture than States armament. Every year, a Vietnam is lived in Brazil; according to Viva Rio that is a Brazilian non-governmental organization. The number of people who died in five years in Vietnam is equal to the number of those who died due to individual armament in one year in Brazil. 500,000 people die with firearms every year around the world. 300, 000 of them die in wars, 200, 000 of them die in warless areas where we believe peaceful is prevalent. What should be understood from these data is that States armament threatens peace environment. However, it is eye catching that individual armament increases in these regions before and after a war and the region loses being a country governed by rule of law. Umut Foundation while operating with this conscious to halt individual armament in order to prevent wars, it actually tries to eliminate the cause that is the basis of States armament.
8. Do you support anti-war movement as Umut Foundation?
Of course, we do and this support is not just words. Our works on State governed by rule of law and consensus still continue. We organize trainers training with the subject of To Be a Citizen. More than 2000 trainers were raised through these trainings. We teach in the trainings, highly interactive, that every individual is free and original, has rights and duties as a citizen and everybody should learn communication skills. It becomes unavoidable for those who realize and internalize these concepts to be against war and respectful of others rights, prefer consensus and peaceful means to solve conflicts.
9. Toy arms are all childrens esoesially boys indispensbale toy. Besides, arm and viloence culture surrounds the society from TV progarms to songs. Do you think there should be demand from the bottom of society to prevent individual armament and culturally something should be done?
It is Umut Foundation who is the first non-governmental organization in the world to say that arm is an addictive material like cigarette, drugs and alcohol. Thorugh surveys it was identified that those who possed arm cannot live and sleep and feel naked without it. İt is known that they develop addiction for arm. Users of arm define it as indispensable pleasure and security feeling. Arm is an indispensable symbole of manhood. Thus, toy arms form a base for this addiction. Possesion of arm at early ages leads to possesion of real arms later in life. Our job becomes difficult due to unfortune violence vulgarity in the society. However, rooted traditions and customs prevalent for centuries can be disposed thorugh effective crime prevention policy. State should make its stance clear and should be loyal to it. Favouring the income of the State and those who work in the sector over such a problem that theratens the societys health means humiliation of victim of arm and their families more, which is inapropriate. Moreover, state spends the income that it obtains from the sector on fight against crime. The cost of crime is too much. This cost should be sepnt for high quality primary education in our society. Thus, the citizens will reach a conscious level that will make them not desiring arm.
10. What do you think about the present position of Umut Foundation?
Umut Foundation is now a completly institutionalized model non-governmental organization that is managed by a professional staff. Its aim is to work for the benefit of society. Trustee committe is composed of opinion leaders who have the quality of representing the foundation at an international level. It has got a consultant statue to United Nations. It never retreats from being scienctific in its every activity and the information it shares is relaible. Thus, it is perceived as ombudsman by society and its opinion is highly sought. The Foundation carried out 5 panels, 7 seminars, 9 workshop, 13 conference, 3 forums, 1 international symposium, 3 campaigns and around 100 trainings during a period of 10 years. Besides, it organized 11 awarded competitions, published 8 books and prepared Disarmament Turkey Alternative Report that it presented to United Nations. It participated in around 100 international meeting, in most of which it read a manifestation. This is a sucess. But, if you ask me what we did in terms of the mission, the concept of individual disarmament was defined by Umut Foundation, which is acepted by the society. The citizens realised that individual armament is a social problem and the law maker is now talking and analysing the problem. The most important point is that arm lobby is now getting irritated by us which means we are doing the opposition on the right base and we are effective. In short, arm that has been promoted as our tradition for years is now being discussed about.
11. Does Umut Foundation have works on other social problems such as women, gender discrimination, and childrens rights?
Umut Foundation perhaps is the non-governmental organization who has the widest purpose. Our aim contains the concepts of human rights, environment, peace, rule of law. Even on its own, the citizenship consious contains the concepts of woman, child, human rights, justice, domestic democracy, laws, and the skills of compromise and mediation. We include these subjects in our trainings and are taught the youth as principles.
Our programe is as follows: 1) a search meeting titled as Individual Armament Problem in Turkey will be carried out on 03 September. We invited members of arm industry who complains we never have the opportunity to speak, law makers and executers. Everybody has something to say on a democratic platform, we wanted to share and find solution recommendations together. We think that it will be very nice to reach a discussion platform where limited number of media members will also attend and the meeting will be very fruitful. 2) We decided to carry out March of Ssilent Shoes activitiy on 28 September in Urfa. It is especially chosen because it is one of the cities where armamanet is most intense. 3) We are initiating a campaign of No to Gun in Celebrations and we are spreading out of Istanbul by moving animations and other visual materials. 4) We continue to provide trainings titled as Trainers Trainings to be a Citizen to volunteers and students of TEGV and Sabancı University. 5) We are working on Law on Firearms and preparing contemporary Bill.
Thanks