turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

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countries and either publishing these interviews in newspapers or broadcasting
them on TV: Newspapers and TV were preferred to reach large numbers of
people. Each team member drew a “power map” and identified the people
who can be interested in this issue and the people who can be target of group’s
action. Then according to their potentials and capabilities, each member
identified the action that he/she individually can take. We called our team
“Prejudice Busters”.
The resulting project was; to make interviews with war veterans and people
who were from the “exchanged populations” and to publish them. Here the aim
was not informing people about history or events; rather the aim was to make
people aware about the veterans and exchanged populations, the experiences
and the feelings of these people. We wanted people of both countries to
understand that they were not the enemies who were forced to leave Greece
and Turkey; that they were human beings with feelings; that they suffered
from the exchange and that they still missed their native lands. The aim was to
show the effects of exchange on people and to show that the experiences were
similar in both countries.
TEAM II: PREJUDICE/STEREOTYPES
........................................................................................................... by Çiğdem Kotil
We were five people who wanted to work on the issue of prejudice and
stereotypes. We formed a team and Jason Becker coached us in this work.
First we discussed what “prejudice” was as a concept and then we listed down
prejudices about people of Greece and Turkey. In order to turn this list into a
do-able project, we limited our goals to working with college students only.
Afterwards, our coach helped us create an action plan with his questions. Our
concrete plan was to choose universities in towns near the border: Edirne and
Thessaloniki. Some of the residents of these towns used to live across the
border. We planned to invite 50 students from social sciences departments
to a summer school to take place in Edirne and Thessaloniki. To realize this
goal, we decided to contact professors in these departments, student clubs,
municipalities, local people and the local media: With their cooperation it
would be possible to realize this project. To help students and professors meet
and talk about the project, we decided to organize a dinner. Students coming
to the summer school would be lodged at the grandparents of the students
who would go the summer school across the border. This arrangement would
put young people with their peers at the summer school and also put them in
touch with the older generation from whom they could learn how things used
to be in the older days. This way young people will work on issue of prejudice
and stereotypes in the summer school with the new perspective and they will
learn from the elders – a perspective very different from the nationalistic
discourse.
TEAM III: MEDIA
.............................................................................................................. by Gülin Pasin
We were five people who wanted to work on the negative role media has played
in Greek-Turkish relations. We formed a team and Serdar M. Değirmencioğlu
coached us in this work. It’s a well-known fact that the media is one of the
most important tools nowadays to have a real influence on people. We have
observed the positive, negative, constructive or destructives influences of the
media on Turkish-Greek relations over the years. Our group decided to create a
pressure group on media with the aim to improve the relations between Greece
and Turkey. During the workshop, we made an analysis of all the institutions,
agencies and individuals that we can influence through media and we decided our
project duration as one month. Our working group composed of five youngsters
decided to select the most efficient method that will lead us to a meaningful
change in a month time. We classified different newspapers addressing to
different segments of the society and we selected three newspapers addressing
low income class and educationally disadvantaged areas as our target group.
Our objective is closely monitoring the news published or to be published in
these papers with the aim to examine whether the news include expressions
promoting racism, nationalism, prejudices and to carry out various activities so
as to have more constructive papers. Our concrete action plan is as follows:
Arrange meetings with the chief-editors of newspapers to discuss
regarding the articles published in the papers, to question the
reality of the published articles and to receive their support for
Turkish-Greek friendship
Rebuilding Communication Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe