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

 



Thank you for inviting me here in this regional interchange of dialogue. I listened very carefully and I think the most important part of establishing any kind of co-habitance is dialogue and this is what we’re having here. I think that co-habitance as in a family the same in the world or same in the nation must be based on set of mutually agreed and respected rules other then written as in a constitution or not but in any case there must be clear and agreed. This has been the case with the EU and I’d like to agree very much with Mr. Koç that the economic agreements do spearhead and cement such development of understanding and further spheres such as the political, social and the cultural.

I do believe that greatest barriers to dialogue such as technological barriers have been eradicated in the beginning of the century, the political barrier of the cold war and also of course enabling of information technology that has greatly enhanced our ability to communicate and information to travel much more faster and vastly at the same time between very different constituencies and therefore create new kinds of dialogue. I know for a fact that in this splendid city co-habitance regime and state that encourage tolerance has operated for thousands of years so speaking for our region and I think this is also what Mr. Koç meant saying that global co-habitance is an utopia we must act first in our house, first in our neighborhood, first in our region and we have the fortune of coming from a region that has experienced for thousands of years and unfortunately has become for the last century perhaps a paradigm of intolerance and I am speaking of Southeastern Europe, Balkans and the conflicts that we experienced twice or thrice within the century. Now in the 21st century I don’t believe that we have great barriers ahead of us, I think as I said the political barrier is gone the technological barrier to dialogue is gone, information freedom is here both in media but also in electronic communication systems and I also happen to think that clash of civilizations argument is not valid. I don’t think there is a clash of civilizations, I think that there might be clash of mentality, clash of how people act in this world like the paradigm from the debate in Egypt that should one pull the hicap down or not, how do you communicate with other cultures but I don’t think the argument as such is valid. I have one question to Dr. Vesper whom I think might create a discussion, talking about multilingualism and how they need to develop a lot of languages and we do come from a region that we speak a lot of languages, is multilingualism the same thing as multiculturalism, or is it an enabler of multiculturalism?