Istanbul, May 11, 2006
THE KEY OF 21st  CENTURY’S PEACE AND PROSPERITY: LIVING TOGETHER “CO-HABITANCE”
*Panelist
 




I think I will take these questions from very different perspective, I speak from a country, which has no written constitution, so the importance of a constitution that you describe is quite foreign to me. There is an important difference here, in a very pragmatic way over 800 years as we evolved a set of customs and institutions and have no written constitution and I think that is part of why I take such a different perspective which is that the question that we started the session with was about, “how do we develop tolerance” and immediately the thoughts began to come to my mind were very very far away for the questions of constitutions which to a very pragmatic British perspective can sometime seem very distant, very cut-off from the experience of the ordinary person on the street and somehow sort of irrelevant to their day to day life concerns. I don’t think that is totally accurate but that’s the sort of instinctive British response nor that I think it is very relevant probably in Turkey with a very different history. So I take what you are saying very seriously and recognize the validity of that.

But if I can just respond to the question I wanted to respond immediately to this issue because this issue is so important, how do you develop tolerance and the first thing to come to mind was the debate I chaired in January when Tarıq Ramadan an Egyptian who now lives in England and who used to live in Switzerland, he was appearing on a panel and somebody just said to him and this is a classic example of tolerance at the street level, a very sweet good natured woman said “I don’t know how to talk to a woman in any cub, if I meet her in the street I would love to be able to respond to her in the way that I respond to any other person I met on a street or in a shop or in a restaurant but I don’t know where to look, I just see this veil of black. How do I engage with this human being in the way that I have always understood myself to engage with all other fellow citizens”. I thought it was a fascinating moment in the discussion because this woman was being very honest, she had an understanding of citizenship, of how she related to strangers because that is a very important part of citizenship and she couldn’t do it to this Muslim woman and increasingly in the London Streets and many other British streets there are significant number of woman wearing the full veil and I thought it was a microcasm if you like of just how some of these issues on a day to day level set up barriers so how can you begin to break the barriers down. And Tarıq Ramadan’s response was very brave I think, he said “you should go up to the woman in full veil and tell her to take it off” well I am not sure that that would work but that was a very very courageous response and it is kind of a dilemma that’s been played out all across Europe. To the extend that we now have legislation in Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Germany that the full veils should be ruled out that there is certain type of Islamic dress that should become illegal in all public places. This is a very very important aspect to the question of tolerance.


Prof. Dr. T. Güngör Uras: Teşekkür ederim. Bayan Bunting buyrun.

I would prefer to be much more specific about this issue of developing tolerance because it seems to me that talking about economic growth is not sufficient. What I mean is that there was a very popular theory of political science which argued that you’d never get a war between two countries which both had McDonald’s outlet. Well Bosnia showed us that , that was not true that actually you can have economic development and still have terrible ethnic conflict. So that I think there is really a specific question and it is a very very difficult one, which is how do you encourage and stimulate people to see the world through someone else’s eyes? That was the point about the anecdote about the hicap that I was saying which is how do we get to people to literally look through somebody else’s eyes and see the world as they see it which was indeed one of the comments that the minister made last night. So that is a very very difficult issue and I don’t think that economic growth of itself achieves it in fact actually it can sometimes inhibit it and economic growth can sometime destabilize communities, can sometimes lead to an increase of violence and conflict and I think that one of the crucial things also that I would plead for is honesty. That I think we need to be specific rather then utopian and intoxicated with big vision but we also need to be honest and I would challenge one of my distinguished panelist who said that Turkey has the capacity to cohabit with anyone. Now this morning I was very honest, very critical about my own country and I think that is the basis of dialogue we share the problems, it seems to me that Turkey does have a history of problems here. The cohabitation with the Kurds has not been easy. İt is still not easy so we could come together to share our insides from problems that we have in our own countries rather then try and pretend that everything is fine in which case there is no point having a dialogue we can just disappear and all go back home again. So a plea for honesty please.


Mehmet Ali Bayar: Dr. Reedy’e bir sorum var. Orta doğu ile ilgili o anlamda özeleştiri yaparsak, orta doğuda bakarken, bizim co-habitance mümkün kılmayan eksikliklerimiz nedir? Bizim derken, bu dünyanın. Biz kendi kendimize nasıl bir öz eleştiri yapabiliriz başkalarını eleştirirken?

Abdel Raouf El Reedy: Of course we can criticize ourselves no question about that. We have in Egypt tradition of tolerance between Moslems and Christians yet lately there have been some manifestations of problems and some of the grievances of our brothers are legitimit. İ believe that and I said that also in Egypt they have not had enough representatives in the higher places, in the administration, things like that. But at the same time there is a consciousness among the Egyptian society among the Egyptian elite and Egyptian intellectuals that these issues must be addressed. But historically even during the Ottoman Empire Copts and Muslims have lived together very well. But lately there have been some of these problems and there is now more because in a democracy and I have a different view from you that Turkey is the only Muslim democratic country but in Egypt may be we have not reached the level of full democracy but we are certainly very good measure of democracy and there is a freedom of pres fully. So anyway there is now more democracy and with the freedom of pres you can criticize the issues which do not stay doormat, hidden, taboo but they come up to surface and they are addressed and some of these issues now they are being addressed.

But I would like to make a comment with regard to Turkey. We watch Turkey’s application to the EU and we believe and I am one of many Egyptians who watch this with great interest and we believe that Turkey’s entrance into the EU would enhance the concept of tolerance and would bring about a very important bridge between Europe and the Muslim world and since this panel has Europeans and Turks and non-European and non-Turk I felt that I should make that comment. Thank you.

Madeleine Bunting: It seems that one of the things that would be most constructive to emerge from this conference is recognition of a historic opportunity for Turkey such as my fellow panelist has identified. It seems that the role that Turkey could play over the next 20 years in terms of helping to forge a European Islam is incalculably important. And I think that the way in which European Moslems, those in Europe who are symphetatic to this issue of how it is that we can break down the concept of a clash of civilizations and create a European Islamic civilization. It seems to me that we have astonishingly important opportunity here.


Question – Büyükelçi Özdem Sanberk: Çok teşekkür ederim Sayın Başkan. Ben panelistleri kutluyorum. Çok değerli açıklamalar yaptılar ve bizi aydınlattılar. Benim zihnimde olan bir soru var ki, o aydınlanmış değil. Ben bütün panelistlere  soruyorum hatta şahsinizda size yöneltmek istiyorum bu soruyu. Acaba birlikte yaşamanın yani etnik, yahut farkli din, farklı dil grupları olan bir ülkede birlikte yaşamanın temelinde hoşgörü mü yatıyor, yatmalı mı? Acaba hoşgörü sağlıklı bir ölçüt müdür? Eğer ben sadece hoşgörüye göre kendi haklarımı savunacaksam devamlı olarak size bağımlı olmaz mıyım? Bu soru benim biraz kafamı karıştırdı. Uluslararası ilişkilerde de acaba hoşgörü mü tayin etmeli, yoksa devletler hukukuna riayet mi tayin etmeli? Bir ülke içinde huzurlu yaşamanın etnik gruplara sahip bir ülkenin içerisinde huzurlu yaşamanın temelinde hoşgörü mü yatmalı, yoksa yazılı veya yazılı olmayan anayasaların güvencesi altında olan haklar mı yatmalı? Bu sualime “evet haklar yatmalı” diyorlarsa o zaman kolektif haklara sahip olan grupların kendi dışındaki gruplar üzerinde bir baskı aracı olarak kullanmamaları için ne yapılabilir?

Madeleine Bunting: You phrased “tolerance” all law and I think that is a false opposition you’ve got to have both. We know of many many countries which have many kinds of laws enshrined about gender equality and tolerance and yet non of them actually have any real application on the ground and we also know many places where without law there is no protection so the two are absolutely vital, both of them.