turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

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want to be a citizen of the country; the minority identity is given to you by
force. This is segregation as it was the case with Germans and Jews. None
of the Jews wanted to be a German; they wanted to be Jews. Therefore,
minorities should have the right to self-identify themselves or just to be a
member of the society without getting this identity. It’s very complex issue and
leads to racism. If we see a minority member in our country, we don’t ask him
if he wants to be identified like that.
I have been a member of minority group in Turkey, I tried to be member of this
society but I couldn’t manage. The society didn’t accept me. I have been a
Turkish citizen; I’ve been member of many professional organisations in Turkey.
I worked as civil servant in Turkey. I served for the Turkish army. I was a
member of Turkish basketball team. I represented Turkey abroad. I published
books in Turkey, but still I’m not considered as a normal Turkish citizen. I’m
abnormal. Why? I don’t know why. Probably because I had an Orthodox Christian
tradition. Nobody asked me my religion. Nobody asked me if I am really a
Christian Orthodox. They put it on my identity card when I was born. I wanted
to change my identity card. When my son was born, they wrote on his identity
card “dini Hristiyan mezhebi Rum” (religion: Christian, denomination: Rum),
there is no such a denomination (mezhep) and I went to court for that. This is a
clear segregation and racism and indicates how uncivilised we are as a society
and how far we still have to go.
SERDAR DEĞIRMENCIOĞLU
BILGI UNIVERSITY, PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT
The issue of trust is a big issue in Turkey and the question “Who do you trust?”
has an internal reflection. When you ask this question in public polls, we see
that people actually are not trusting any more to anyone other than the army
and the state. This is something that actually fits world where we are living
right now. At the moment, a big major power, the US government and Bush,
are using scared tactics to push the public opinion in behind stage for war. The
first time I experienced scared tactics was in Greece 1972, when I was a kid
and Greece was under military rule. There was a guy with a rifle and there was
a curfew. I didn’t know what a curfew was. But there were apparently several
curfews and I realized that people in Greece at that time were scared. They
were scared to talk, they were scared to act and the minority in particular was
very scared.
This is not just in Greece, later on in Turkey there was severe terrorism and
people were very afraid. When you have people intimidated and scared, then
people act like a sheep, they become a sheep and you can shape them. When
you don’t have trust in “the Other”, even though he/she is your fellow partner
we don’t start acting. If we analyse how people acting in their daily lives, we
see a lack of public engagement. As far as I could observe, there is essentially
not a public engagement in Greece, people do not that strongly follow their
lives and telling their politicians that they are actually playing with politics.
If we were to build trust and confidence within the country, then we need to
speak out that “this is my life and I am taking all the control over then”. If
you were to trust to military in Turkey, then it is difficult to build trust on both
sides. No one should be trusting to any military. Military is the greatest danger
in the world. To build trust and confidence, citizens of the country should
be able to think, should claim their public space, and should be able to deal
with foreign affairs. In many countries foreign affairs is the sole job of the
government. Fortunately, this is changing in Europe since borders are becoming
essentially more transparent.
Rebuilding Communication Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe