turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

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fact that Kayaköy was under 1 st degree protection by relevant authorities and
receiving an official permit to organise a festival on such a land, especially a
Turkish-Greek festival would not be possible at all and even if this would be the
case we would need to pay a lot of money to the government.
Last but not least, it was pretty difficult to soften the rigid mind-set and
disappointment of Kaya villagers. Kayaköy has always been a perfect place for
political competition and profit contest between different actors such as some
travel agencies and some politicians, who always promised to turn this island
into wonderland to build five-star hotels to start eco–tourism in the village.
Some other interest groups such as the Kayaköy Cooperative made up of the
villagers and the Fethiye Chamber of Architects, always wanted to promote
the cultural heritage and beautry of Kayaköy to outside world and they even
managed to organise a small-scale festival in the village some years ago, still
without the success to sustain such an initiative. In short, the villagers were
quite fed up, ignorant and did not believe at all that a group of young people
out of nowhere would overcome all these obstacles and make a festival happen
in their village and at the same time to make them happy and bring them some
money.
However, once the project coordination team started to prepape all necessary
permits and as they increased their planning visits to Kayaköy, somethings
also started to change. It still took ages for the project coordination team to
receive the official permit from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Republic
of Turkey so as to organise a festival on the cultural heritage. Unfortunately
the project team had to pay a reasonable amount from the project budget for
the rent of the place for one week. Still it was a success and relief for us that
we could indeed get the official permit after endless meetings with Fethiye
Museum, Muğla Governorship and Fethiye Municipality as well as the Ministry in
Ankara with the help of some very dedicated architects.
Since the project team was very determined to involve the villagers and other
local stakeholders into the festival as much as possible we started on working on
this mission. We visited many times the village, under the skin-burning sunshine
we visited all houses one by one, knocking their doors, told the villagers all
about the festival asked them whether they would be interested in taking part,
whether they would like to host Greek and Turkish young people and artists in
their houses, whether they would like to take part in some fairs to present their
home made carpets, clothes, jams, local wines and laces. It was only fifteen
days left to the festival, some of the project team members already went to
the Kaya village. After long meetings, public telephone booths were installed
in the village, toilets were cleaned and strengheted, thefrequency of minibus
and shuttle shifts and the number of taxi cabs to the village were increased.
Again it was some ten days before the festival, in a nice summer night, with
the crickets singing in the background, Faruk Akbaş started using his projector
and set up a nice screen at the village café. We started to show somevery nice
movies to the villagers every night until the festival started. They didn’t like
Matrix at all but they all enjoyed watching Vizontele.
So came the festival…The stage was set up, the roads were prepared, the
churches were illimunated..The villagers gathered at the festival place, the
magic opening reception took place at the Taksiyarhis church thanks to the
local wines served by Rotary Club, villagers coming to the church and meeting
with participants, Nea Makri mayor, artists…Children running around..At the
official opening the village head Erkan Kaya and the Fethiye Subgovernor
Cengiz Aksoy welcomed enthusiastically all the participants to the Kaya
Village, a local folk dance group from Fethiye performed an outstanding dance
show for the audience. Baba Zula, with all its enchanting Anatolian motifs
maybe the most colorful band of the whole festival perfomed a breathtaking
improvisation about the village telling the participants the story of the sad
village with melodies in English. Numerous local NGOs together as well as Kaya
villagers weaving carpets, seling home made jams took part in the NGO fair of
KayaFest…
The local authorities were not only active to provide in-kind services but in the
course of the festival but they aso integrated very well with the participants
and their colleagues from Greece. On the second day of the festival, Fethiye
Mayor welcomed Nea Makri mayor Yordanis at his office, where they shaked
each others hands, exchanged their ideas about the Kayaköy as a village of
friendship and peace.
The participants were all over the village…They were staying in the the hosues
KayaFest Youth and Culture Festival Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe