turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

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......................................................................................................Burcu Becermen
Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue
Project Manager, AEGEE-Ankara
Seeing all these academics and well-noted
personalities here in this room excites me a lot. As
we, members of AEGEE-Ankara (European Students’
Forum), were keeping on with our activities open
to all university students in Ankara and carrying out
projects in the field of culture of peace; we were
very glad to meet a group formed by immigrants
dealing with the peace culture as well. We were
young and desired to do our humble contribution
and to learn more, whereas there was now another
organisation having much more experience whose
members suffered directly from this subject and now
are trying to preserve their cultural heritage.
Finally, when these two organisations met, our initiatives and desires about
culture of peace became true under the scope of Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue
Project. It is meaningful that this is the eightieth year of population exchange
and I hope that the subjects that will be discussed here in social, cultural
aspects and about the place of exchange in literature will provide us to be
partners and will give us ideas about the contents of our future activities.
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE:
GREEK-TURKISH CULTURAL BRIDGES:
AEGEAN PEOPLES BEGIN TO SHARE
STORIES AGAIN
Bruce Clark IHT,
December 10, 2003, ATHENS
As the people of Istanbul recover from the deep shock of the terrorist attacks
last month, a blockbuster film in neighboring Greece is reminding people of
that city’s extraordinary tradition of ethnic diversity and coexistence. With
nearly a million tickets sold in a few weeks, “A Touch of Spice” may yet become
the most popular Greek movie of all time. Its theme is the symbiosis between
Turks, Greeks and other ethnic groups that flourished until recently, and never
quite disappeared, in the great conurbation on the Bosporus.
The protagonist is a Greek who is forced to leave Istanbul, along with most of
his family, as a small boy but pines ever after for his home town, the Turkish
girl who was his childhood playmate, and the Oriental cuisine prepared by his
grandfather. As the old man taught him, sweet and spicy flavors can be mixed
in many ways, and they taste better in combination than they would alone.
While the script has its share of stereotypes, it presents a more subtle picture
of the Aegean peoples than “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” in which American
moviegoers were introduced to Greek pride at its silliest. The new film’s
extraordinary resonance in Greece may seem surprising to those who assume
that the relationship between Turks and Hellenes is merely one of atavistic fear
and suspicion.
Those sentiments exist, but they are mixed with a curious mutual fascination,
born out of shared collective memories, which can be sweet as well as painful.
Whenever political conditions allow, this deep sense of commonality between
the Aegean peoples finds expression.
What the new movie also brings home is that in this region, the advent of
modernity has not led to tolerance or cosmopolitanism; it has turned subtle,
complex places into homogenous ones, where variety of ethnicity, language
and religion are more likely to be viewed as strategic problems rather than as
cultural assets.
That story is still unfolding: in the Balkans and Trans-Caucasus, we are still
observing the collapse of multinational empires into prickly nation-states. Nor
is the end result clear: Will the peoples who once coexisted under Ottoman
or Communist rule find a new way of living together, or will they nurse their
grievances until the next round of conflict? In shaping that outcome, culture
can play a huge, constructive part: films, novels and songs articulate truths
of which politicians or soldiers cannot easily speak. While the business of
presidents and generals is to draw lines and enforce them, art can deal with
ambivalence, worlds that overlap and boundaries that blur. And in that most
ambivalent of all post-Ottoman relationships, between Greeks and Turks, the
role of culture has never been so important.
Population Exchange Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe