turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

I published so many articles about Turkish books and about Greeks and how the
Greeks are pretending and it’s very clear that it’s very bad with text books;
however they are hopefully changing the books again this year.
Turkey started first with some well-known names to criticise the text-books
in their country as early as 1971. In Greece, now there are a lot of books and
studies criticising Greek text-books. Both Turks and Greeks criticising their own
foreign policy and the mistakes each sides did, their own sides. There are
names well-known in Turkey living in Greece but they are considered as naive,
sometimes traitors, strangers, misled, etc. However, there are projects carried
out by Greeks and Turks trying to identify what’s wrong and what is right. We
should not be reproducing images that disastrous what nations did so many
years.
PANEL SESSION ON
NGOS AND GOVERNMENTS
This session covered discussions on how the dialogue between Turkish and Greek
communities and governments emerged, the grounds leading the initiation of
the dialogue process, the factors blocked the communication in the past, how
youth and NGOs can take this dialogue further in the future. Hercules Millas,
Bahar Rumelili and Aydan Paşaoğlu informed the participants as speakers.
AYDAN PAŞAOĞLU
At the entrance of our headquarters there is a wide
range of presents, medals, plaques from a variety of
groups, including civil authorities from governors to
presidents, military and police organisation, schools,
private companies as well as other NGOs from
both national and international circles. All given in
memory of our activities within the scope of search
and rescue, basically in return for our operations,
seminars, trainings and exercises. This display
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe
reflects the mission, history and activities as well as the connections of AKUT
(Search and Rescue Association) with public and private institutions.
AKUT’s mission is to get mobilised in times of emergencies in order to save
lives. We are organised to respond to emergencies, in order to provide help
when for sportsmen who are lost or injured out in the mountains, valleys, caves
or just for ordinary civilians who suffer from big accidents or natural disasters
such as floods and earthquakes. The process of emergency response can be
explained as working with an amateur spirit based on volunteering, using the
right search and rescue techniques, reaching the victims of an accident or a
disaster in the shortest time possible, securing the most convenient conditions
for response, providing the appropriate medical support and delivering the
individuals to a safe environment quickly.
Our history is that of a steam of volunteers who first came together back in
1994 during a mountain SAR operation, which ended with a complete failure.
The lost Alpinists were not found in spite of strong efforts of a big mixed group.
In the early days the main activities of AKUT group in İstanbul were trainings
and exercises on search and rescue. The starting point and the major aim
were to establish a firm foundation for creating the capability of search and
rescue in accordance with the international standards. In due course, with
the accumulation of basic know-how from in-house, local and foreign sources,
supported with the growth of the team, there was a natural and gradual switch
to the area of disaster response. Remarkably after a series of earthquakes,
starting with Adana Ceyhan 1998, followed by Marmara Earhquake in 1999 and
the operations abroad at Greece, Taiwan and India Earthquakes, also at the
Mozambique Flood, the group enlarged further and diversified its expertise.
Right after Adana Ceyhan Earthquake, AKUT was qualified by the government
as an association, which works for the good of the public, good-cause
association. Furthermore, due to its contributions and achievements at the
local and international search and rescue operations mainly in 1999, AKUT was
acknowledged by the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group of the
United Nations and it was listed in the SAR Directory to be called up in case of
an emergency response activity of the UN. Today, we are involved with both
outdoor emergencies and a variety of man-made and natural disasters. Today
AKUT is a big family, which has 4 branches in Antalya, Ankara, Marmaris and
Bingöl linked to the headquarters in İstanbul.
Rebuilding Communication
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