Thank you very much. It is an honor for me to be invited to speak to such a distinguished meeting. This is the pretty much the 40th anniversary of my first visit to Istanbul. My wife and I lived in the Aksaray district for several months. Aksaray has changed a great deal along with the rest of Istanbul but it is quite a pleasure for me to be back here.

When one looks at the issue of co-habitance and uses the term civilization from an American context and I am coming here of course from the US. Everything is overshadowed by the work of Samuel Huntington entitled Clash of Civilizations which I know you’re all familiar with. Now that idea clashes of civilizations was produced in the year 1990 as the cold war was coming to an end. The question that Huntington posed was basically was in the future with the cold war coming to an end what will be the major clashes, sources of international discord in the future, in other words the word clash was determined by the question that was being asked. He was asking the question of future clashes, the question was what would go with clash and there were several alternatives.

One possibility that was talked about then and still being talked about is the idea of global North versus the global South and the question of the distribution of world wealth along that spectrum. Another idea that people talked about was the idea that there would be clash between people who were competing for world resources. We now have coming to the floor again as people think about the future of the Chinese economy and its consumption of oil, future of the Indian economy etc. so you can talk about clash along those lines. A third possibility would be to talk about clash between a secular world and fundamentalist world. This is something that would not be popular in the US even though somewhere between 25 – 40% of the American population define themselves as fundamentalist Christians nevertheless it is not encouraged in the US to think publicly in terms of a clash between fundamentalism and secularism. What Huntington chose to talk about was a clash of civilizations. This was probably the worst idea that he could have come up with under the circumstances. Part of the problems was that it was playing into the immediate environment of the US public that had been created in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. A number of suggestions have been raised as to how to characterize the fueling of hostility that Americans felt coming out of the Iranian revolution. One person suggested crescent of crises, another one suggested arc of instability, Huntington suggested a clash of civilizations. But it was responsive to American perception of the world rather then a global concept I think.

The second problem was that even though Huntington himself does not elaborate on what is civilization is, and what Islam is in the center of civilization. The popular understanding does work.  For train disconcert by civilizations does not simply something that quietly happen in the future but it is going to be continuation of something that’s been going on for 14 centuries in another words it was not a new idea coming out of the end of the cold war or new world configuration but rather a resumption of something that was very old. This was not Huntington’s idea at least not explicitly but it was the way the idea was received and understood in the American public so that it is very difficult in the US today when the issue of clash of civilizations arises to distinguish between that as a geo-strategic concept and outright Islamophobia.  And in fact Islamophobia is rampened in the US in almost all levels of society and this is a negative consequence in part of the intervention that Samuel Huntington made in that article.

When I speak to American audiences I say that I think that clash of civilizations is the most distractive idea that has been put forth in the American political arena in the last 50 years. And it is very important for us to discard this idea before the people who thought of it actually begin to believe in. and the way that I can struck this is to say that first the issue is not necessarily a clash. That was the problem that Huntington posed. What will be the confrontations in the future? He never posed the question of what will be the synergies of the future. What will be the cooperations, what will be the constructive forces of the future and there you end up with very different possible answers. For example were do think about the same questions in the year 1800, you might say what will be the clashes of the future point of view of 1800? And most reasonable people perhaps would have considered clash between empires, between the French Empire, the British Empire, the hopes eventually of German Empire and Italian Empire and for that matter Ottoman Empire at that time, a clash of empires. And that is in fact what occurred over the next 100 plus years but if one had talked at that time about what will be the constructive forces of the future in the year 1800, one would have talked about European civilization, the industrial revolution, the growth of societies that were fundamentally based on principles of the enlightment and so forth in other words the same groups that from a point of clash, were going to be oppose to each other were groups that from a point of constructive progress were going to join one another. Europe was both the source of a clash and the source of cooperation ad progress.

So when we have a theme like we have today co-habitance of not the ability but the potential progress to be arrived from groups getting along with one another. That is a far more important question I think then the issue of clashes. Clashes tend to be periodic, they happen, they recede, one gets beyond them. Whereas issues of long term economic growth, cooperation among parts of the world, these are of a longer term and of a more substantial nature. To illustrate this to American audiences I talk about the idea of we narrating the past. In other words when a historian decides how to construct a historical narrative, the historian has great deal of latitude. The basic ideas that historians lay out are what we call master narratives. They are ideas that are considered to be so obvious, so self-evident that no one would question them and yet they are invented by historians. And they are changed over the course of time. I can give you example from recent work in the area of history. If you go back to history books that were written in 1950, you can read the entire history of Europe without hearing anything about women. Then there was a revolution in historical thinking and now it would be impossible to write history of Europe or for that matter history of the any other part of the world without having the history of women being important part of it, because the master narratives change. They change because world circumstances change, the feminist movement came about, the worldwide assertion of the position of women and the importance of women in the society becomes a fact and you change the historical narrative because of those changes in circumstance.

What I would argue is that globalization and the increasingly tight interrelationships among the countries of the world, the ease of transportation as people move from continent to continent and the flows of migrants from the Middle East to North Africa to Europe from Latin America to US, from South East, South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. These flows have made the world a much more tightly integrated place and people in business world understand that very readily. But should there be historical response to that and I believe very strongly that there should be historical response that says that master narratives that are based on the idea of clashes. On the idea of enduring hatred or warfare are absolute. It may seem unreasonable perhaps to think that one can write history in this way but in fact we’ve already done this in the history of Europe. There was a period of time in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries when it would have been impossible to write history of Europe without having as a central theme about history, the warfare between Protestants and Catholics. And it seemed at the time as though there is nothing more important then fighting for Catholicism or fighting for Protestantism and some of the most destructive wars in the entire history of Europe were fought over this issue. But now we no longer write the history of Europe in that way. We say that Protestants and Catholics are all Christians, this was simply an episode that was less important then the fundamental identities of religion and viewpoint that you had between Catholics and Protestants and so we write a history in which we contextualize that conflict, within a broader context of cooperation and common progress. One could say the same thing about relations between Jews and Christians in Europe. Prior to World War II the phrase Judao-Christian civilization was rarely used. Now in the US every child grows up believing that part of the basis of the society that they live in is a Judao-Christian background implying somehow that Jews and Christians have always come along. I don’t think it is any secret to say that Jews and Christians have not always gotten along in Europe as a matter of fact some of the darkest hours of European history had to do with the hatred of Christians for Jews but history gets re-written, gets re-told in ways it says that there is a common Judao-Christian bases for European civilization.

Now, one of the master narratives that we need to change is the idea that the relationship between the Islamic world and Europe has always been and must always be one of conflict. There’s certainly have been conflicts. There’ve been times when Muslim countries have attacked and times when Europe have attacked Muslim countries. There have been occupations of European countries by Islamic rulers that have lasted hundreds of years and should have even been thought of as occupations. There’ve been periods of occupation when European powers have dominated parts of the Islamic Middle East and North Africa. But the idea that clash should be the defining motive, should be the dominant view as absolute. It does not have to be that way, we do not have to talk about the siege of Vienna or the Crusades or the battle of tour, and there are other ways to narrate this history. How else could you narrate it? First of all one thing that everybody agrees on is that the religious bases of Islam, Judaism and Christianity are so close as to constitute single world religious phenomena. You can talk about these people as the children of Abraham, you can say that they come from Semitic scripturalist, religions you can frame it anyway you like but no matter how you frame it you are always coming down to same conclusion that Islam, Christianity and Judaism belong together in theological and scriptural terms.

Another way to do it is to look at the enormous flows of civilizational artifacts, or product or ideas across the boundary between the Islamic world and Christian Europe. We’re very reluctant to do this in American and European historical study and it is curious question as to why. There is one theme of history that is so called Columbian exchange and this is the products that we discovered in the new world by European travelers when they arrived in North and South America and they brought these products back to Europe and they changed the European economy and European diet. Particularly tomatoes and potatoes are pointed out as products that come from the new world or chocolate, another one that comes from the new world. But there were far more products that come into Europe from the Islamic world those we never talk about. Why is there a reluctance to talk about the enormous debt that Europe owes to the Islamic world? Well, partly it has to do with the reluctance of any society to be considered a borrower. I talked about this matter with colleagues who work on the history of Japan. When we teach the history of Japan in the US, we always have theme about everything that Japanese have borrowed from China. But a Japanese historian talking to Japanese students doesn’t talk about Japan borrowing from China. They talk about common ideas, common esthetics, common cultural products that Japan and China and Korea share. The idea of borrowing seems unattractive but I would suggest that if a Japanese historian were to teach the history of Europe and Islamic Middle East and North Africa that a major theme they would have would be borrowing because the degree that which European culture today and economy today are rooted in those things that came from the Muslim world but are rarely acknowledged. Now, you can say that everyone knows that Greek philosophy entered into Europe through translations from works of Arabic and a colleague Charles Butterworth is a specialist on this and one can also recognize that there are some theological views on certain religious institutions that have a resemblance but the degree of the borrowing of European culture from the Islamic world has never been comprehensibly acknowledged. Almost all of scientific medicine is rooted in borrowings from the Muslim world. The chemical industry is rooted from borrowing of Muslim world; music and literature have borrowings from Muslim world. For an American I will point out that when you get up in the morning and you take a shower the hard soap that you use is borrowed from the Muslim world. The orange juice that you drink at breakfast is borrowed from the Muslim world. The transparent glass you drink from is from the Muslim world. Coffee and coffee cup is from the Muslim world; the glaze on the cup is from the Muslim world. The newspaper you read the paper comes from the Muslim world. The idea of printing comes from the Muslim world. For lunch you have pasta or rice, both come from the Muslim world. You play a game of chess or backgammon; they come from the Muslim world. The daily life of Europe, what is understood to be typical European culture would be inconceivable without the massive amount of cultural transfer that took place across the Mediterranean during period from 12th century to the 16 or 17 century. Now the irony is that, that is exactly that period that European historians talk about as period of crusades. In other words at the time when Europe was in the process of reforming its daily life, its common place practices to mass of borrowing from the Muslim world. The way it narrated this was to say this was the period when we attacked the Muslim world and when we were engaged in military campaigns and a lot of it is a question that you don’t like to be a borrower. You want to show yourself to be more independent and enterprising and therefore we don’t have a theme of borrowing in the history of Europe vis-a-vie the Muslim world. Today you can say that it is reversed that you have a mass amount of borrowing going the other direction. But some people in the Muslim world who say this is a period of clash that is at titanic level and Usame Bin Laden will talk about the crusaders and the Jews and how they are killing Moslems in all sorts of places and how true Moslems must stand up against this. But this is the same sort of defense that Europeans practiced hundreds of years ago.

The fact of the matter is that I think you can narrate the history of Islam and the history of Europe as a single story, which I call Islamo-Christian civilization in which the fundamental, spiritual, intellectual and material identities or similarities within this broad area become the center story that you talk about and indeed starting this coming year, I will be teaching a course at Columbia university that is on the subject of Islamo-Christian civilization and trying to make exactly that point. And the interesting thing is that if you do this you learn more about Europe then you would otherwise and you learn more about Islam. Because teaching them together gives you different perspective that is extremely constructive on both side but what you also find is that Istanbul or Turkey more broadly becomes a great pivot of history. This is the point of junction along with Spain, the two ends of the Mediterranean Sea and to some degree the connection between Italy and Tunisia in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, and these become the great corridors through which the flows within and thru Islamo-Christian civilization take place.

So I think that what I believe we need now is to discard that idea of clash should be our theme for thinking about future but moving into co-habitance it isn’t simply a matter of how over the next 50 or 100 years we can come together but also matter of reconstructing our past to show that we’ve long been together and that places that have been established in obsolete narratives as emblems of conflict. For example the Ayasofia, which in traditional European histories they’ll say that was once a cathedral now it is a mosque, isn’t this an example of Muslims try to destroy everything. So this is an example of co-habitance and that is something that has been with us in Islamic and European or Euro-American history and it is something upon which we can build toward a future co-habitance without having to become side-tracked by the fundamentally time limited issues of conflict that are encapsulated in Huntington’s notion of clash of civilizations. This is not to deny that there is a war going on Iraq and Afghanistan, this is not to deny that there is terrorism but what it is to affirm is that these things pass and they do not need to be either now or in the past or in the future the primary points of reference in trying to understand how people get along. Instead the co-habitance of this meeting is devoted to is a far stronger theme to build upon both for the future and for re-understanding the shared past that Muslims and Europeans have. Thank you very much.


Questions - Answers

Ferda Yurtturu: Bir sivil toplum kuruluşu adına buradayım. Gerçi soracağım soru Sayın Madeleine içindi. Kendisi yok ama gene de sorayım. Ben sadece şunu söylemek istiyorum. İslam kültürünün farklılığını ve Hıristiyan toplumunun farklılığını anlatıyor. Kendisi İslam toplumunun kültürünün farklılığına inanmış mı?

Prof. Dr. İlter Turan: Sorunuzdan belki değişik yorumların mevcudiyetini tespit etmemiz gerektiğini belirtmek istediğinizi anlıyorum. Bir sonraki soru lütfen.

Prof. Dr. Tayyar Sadıklar: Başkent Üniversitesi öğretim üyesiyim. Birlikte yaşama kaygusu içindeyken dünyada birdenbire beliren bu soykırım konusunu ağzımıza aldığımız zaman bizi cezaevine gönderecek kararlar alabilen parlamentoların tutumunu nasıl değerlendiriyor konuşmacılar?

Barbaros Dinçer: İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Bölümü öğrencisiyim. Benim sorumun özel olarak bir konuşmacıyı hedef alması gerekmiyor. Konuşmacılar bahsettikleri konular itibariyle kültürün çevresinde döndüler. Hepimizin bildiği bir gerçek var. Geçmişte çok kültürlülük, toplumların beraber, birlikte yaşaması ve barış içinde yaşaması için bir söylem olarak dile getirildi ve bunun sosyal anlamda yaşanacak olan problemleri bir çözüm olabileceği ileri sürülmüştü. Ama bugün geldiğimiz noktada sosyal krizler ve toplumsal anlamda çok büyük sorunlarla karşılaşmaktayız. Benim bu noktada düşüncem şu: Çok kültürlülük de artık bazı sorunların çözümüne cevap olamamakta. Bunun yerine kültürler arası diyalog, kültürlerin karşılıklı olarak birbirini anlaması sözkonusu. Bu bağlamda, demokrasi kavramı özellikle temsili demokrasinin günümüzde çok ciddi anlamda bir krizde olduğunu düşünmekteyim ve katılımcı demokrasi konusunda konuşmacılarımız ne düşünüyor. Farklı kültürleri kabul edelim, birbirimize paralel yaşamlar yaşayalım yerine, içiçe geçmiş yaşamlar, herkesin temsil edilebilmesi, herkesin demokrasiye katılabilmesi anlamında bir çözüm olabilir mi?

Sefa Erkan: Marmara Üniversitesi İktisat üçüncü sınıf öğrencisiyim. Charles Butterworth’ün konuşmasından şunu anladık: Amerika, Müslüman profesörlere dahi vize vermeyerek, şu mesajı veriyor: Müslümanları sevmiyoruz, tanımıyoruz, tanımak ve anlamak da istemiyoruz. Ben buna katılmıyorum. Çünkü Amerika yüzbinlerce insanla Irak’a gelip, orada bazı İslami araştırmalar yapıyor. Demek ki, İslam’a alaka duyduğunu gösteriyor. Kendi ülkesinde görmek istemiyor ama kendisi buraya geliyor. Hatta son zamanlarda İran’da da bazı araştırmalar yapmak istiyor. Acaba bir zaman sonra Türk İslamını da daha yakından tanımak, zorla tanımak ister mi? Zorla tanımaya çalışmak bir Amerikan tarzı mı? Asla değişmesi mümkün değil mi?

Naci Ekşi: Sayın Turan konuşmanız her ne kadar kültür ve medeniyet konumuz öyleyse de, işin bir ekonomik boyutu olduğunu işaret ettiniz. Kültür ve medeniyet başlığını unutmadan bugün AB’ni düşündüğümüz, AB’ne girmeye çalıştığımız bir devrede nasıl ki bir zamanlar Müslüman olduklarını bile bile bizim insanlarımızı alıp, Avrupa’da çalıştırdılar ise, bir gün AB acaba ekonomik nedenlerden dolayı kültür ve medeniyeti co-habitance bir tarafa bırakarak “gelin arkadaş, biz size muhtacız, kolkola girelim” diyebilirler mi? Özellikle yabancı konuşmacılardan bu konuda bir değerlendirme istiyorum.

Coşkun Varlık: Erciyes Üniversitesi İşletme Bölümü öğrencisiyim. Konuşmacıların bahsettiği Islamic Fobia denilen İslam korkusundan bahsedildi. Bu şimdiye kadar yeni oluşan bir şey sanırım. Bunun temelinde acaba petrol kaynaklarının İslam dünyasının elinde bulunması olabilir mi? Yani Sayın Bulliet’in bahsettiği gibi, Avrupa dolayısıyla Amerika kültürünün temellerini İslam dünyasından almıştır ve İslam’ın kelime manası barıştır. Nasıl böyle bir şeyden korkulabilir?

Hayrullah Özkan: Konunun sürecinde medya sessiz çoğunluğun etkileşimi, dışlamalar kimlik tartışmalarında basının yerini bölümleştirmede fayda görüyorum. Bu tespitimi yaparken ben İngiltere’de 4 yıl, Amerika’da 9 yıl yaşadım. Üniversitede araştırma asistanlığı ve mühendis olarak bulundum ve İstanbul’da yaşayan bir kimliğim vardı ve hiç rahatsızlık duymadım. Fakat son 10 yıldır memleketimde buradan İngiltere’ye, buradan Avrupa’ya ve Amerika’ya baktığımda, çok çirkin bir yapı görüyorum. Gerçi ben Amerika’dayken sürecin geldiğini hissediyordum. Yani Lübnan’da bir savaş varken, arka planda cami gösteriyordu. Kişiler korkutularak planlanıyordu. Hadise şuna geliyor: Dünyadaki güç dengeleri finansal ve yapısal olarak, bunlar dünyayı nasıl yönetmek isterlerken, kişilere olayları nasıl aksettirmek istiyorlar. Burada zaten dün akşamki açılış konuşmasında bu iş şöyle tanımlandı. Güç sahipleriyle değerler sahiplerini buluşturma. Bence kimlik tartışmasını da doğru bulmuyorum. Çünkü kimlik, ötekini yaratır. Yani Fenerbahçe/Beşiktaş, Avrupalı/Avrupalı olmayan. Daha ziyade temel olarak ontolojik questioning yapmak lazım. Sorgulama şu: Ben hangi takımdayım değil de, ben insan mıyım? İnsanlık değer nedir? Paylaşmak mı? Yoksa hayvansal güçlerle güçlü olan öbürünü yemeli mi? tartışmayı bu zemine taşımak lazım.

Sayın Kırdar: Çok teşekkür ederim. Enteresan bir paneldeyiz. 3 panel üyesi Anglo Sakson olduğu için müsaade ederseniz, ben sualimi İngilizce olarak sormak istiyorum.

First of al let me introduce myself, I have a Turkish passport but have been living for 32 years in New York and I worked for UN and I consider myself a global citizen plus I am a member of New York Interfed society which has been chaired by Dean Molten who used to be Dean of St.Johns Cathedral so I’ve been involved with this subject. The point what I am trying to drive and ask is a question to you, instead of looking as a clash of civilization, it is not the clash of religious that what are the basics of quote and unquote “civilized societies”. If we look from that point of view we see couple of points, first of all one of the most valuable thing is freedom of life and freedom of expression so our common search should be for instance to maintain that.

First point is, how to maintain secularism which is being endangered as Prof. Butterworth has mentioned, I can see how the system becoming politicized today. That is common danger.

The second point is freedom expression. In Europe, a few months ago there been the case of that cartoon and at that time it was defended as freedom of expression. Prophet was equaled to a terrorist and that is being argued as a freedom of expression. Nowadays we see under the freedom of expression a law being pushed so that the French Senate referring to Armenian genocide should become kind of crime to be punished. So should we look at it at the end of this panel…thank you.

Atilla Silahtaroğlu: Silkar A.Ş.’yi temsilen burada bulunuyorum. Çok kültürlülük deyince, dünya üzeride çok kültürlülük sanki sırf İslam kültürüyle, orta doğu kültürüyle Avrupa kültürü beraber yaşaması çok kültürlülük gibi anlaşılıyor. Başka kültürler de var. Uzak doğu kültürü var. Afrika kültürü var. Bugün uzak doğu kültürüyle Türk kültürü ya da İslam kültürü orta doğu kültürünün ya da Amerika kültürünün beraber yaşamında hiçbir problem olmuyor. Afrika kültürüyle de aynı şekilde. İslam kültürünün ya da orta doğru kültürünün beraber yaşamında bir problem olmuyor. Problem genelde Avrupa kültürü ile İslam kültürü arasındaymış gibi algılanıyor. Bu neden böyle algılanıyor? Niye bunun üzerinde odaklanıyoruz?

İkincisi, refah düzeyi daha yüksek olan toplumun bireylerinin refah düzeyi daha alçak olan toplum bireylerini kültür farklılıklarını anlamakta daha büyük sorumlulukları olduğunu düşünüyorum. Amerikan kültürü, uzak doğu kültürü arasında da olmuştur. Aynı şekilde orta doğu kültürüyle İslam kültürüyle de Amerikan, Avrupa kültürü arasında da olması gerektiğini düşünüyorum. Onları yönetmek yerine, onlarla beraber yaşamak ve anlamak çerçevesinde.

Aydın Bandırma: Eskişehir’den katılıyorum. Birinci konuşmacımız Sayın Richard Bulliet’in sunumundan şunu çıkardım: Avrupa medeniyetinin gelişmesinde İslam dininin birtakım rolü olmuş. Avrupa insanları İslam dininin mesajlarını iyi algılayıp, kendi medeniyetlerinin gelişmesini kullanmışlar. Ancak, ters yönden baktığımızda, İslam ülkeleri nedense bu mesajları alamamış ve gelişmelerini sağlıklı bir şekilde tamamlayamamış olduğu ortaya çıkıyor. Burada o zaman konumuz gereği, co-habitance ile Avrupa ülkelerine de bir görev düşüyor diye düşünüyorum. Avrupa ülkeleri İslam ülkeleri ile biraraya gelerek, iyi niyetlerle toplantılar, görüşmeler yaparak, İslam’ın mesajlarının daha iyi algılanmasını sağlamakta bir rol oynayabilirler diye düşünüyorum. Bu konuda görüşleri nedir acaba?


Prof. Dr. Richard W. Bulliet: I will make some very brief remarks. One of the problems that we have and this to some degree arises out of the Huntington moment is the idea that you have Islam and the West. It is very clear from this panel that there are two different Wests, there is Europe and there is US. With respect to regarding Islam and Turkey, Europe and US are profoundly different and should never be confused with each other. In Europe headscarves, cartoons, impoverished workers and so forth, these aren’t issues in the US. We don’t have masses of unemployed Muslim immigrants. Some of the Muslim groups such as the Iranians amongst the wealthiest people ever to immigrate to he US. The cartoon issue and the scarf issue didn’t have much resonance there and in America multi-cultarilism where you accept the way of life of other people is commonplace. We had this with African Americans for centuries and we don’t have problems with that. On the other hand we do have Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush all by himself is a huge world problem and we have to take responsibility for it, Charles and I will vote against him but he is our fault I mean he is our country. So we also have media problem, I think that was correctly brought up, our media simply are not like the Guardian, they are far more naïve and most of the news that people get in our country do not come from the top of the media but from things like talk radio and other very low grade right wing sources. We have an educational problem that Prof. Butterworth has talked about in the general profound ignorance of even people in highly distinguished positions what Madeleine said about stupid high grade intellects who know nothing about Islam, that does apply to US. We have an oil issue and it is very different for the US then it is for Europe partly because the oil industry is so totally linked with the leadership of the republican party and the US has this relationship with Saudi Arabia which on one hand is hated by most Americans because it seems to be to represent everything that is wrong with Islam on the other hand it is considered most important country in the Muslim world the one we cannot do without and therefore we will accept anything that the Saudis do. We have an issue of eve angelicals Europe doesn’t have this. Fundamentalist Christianity is profound in the US so that issues like homosexuality and so forth those don’t boil down to issues about Islam and something else. These are within our society, within Christianity and then finally, ultimately the great profound problem is the profusion of dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world most of which claim to be secular and yet they are considered by the US to be somehow a product of Islam. But if we could get rid of the dictatorships I don’t mean getting rid of by invading, I don’t think that is a good strategy but I think dictatorship is a real problem that needs to be addressed. And in some way that is unrelated to Islam. Thank you.