turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

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WORLD ENVIRONMENT WEEK
Sharing experiences of Greek and Turkish municipalities’ and NGOs on
environmental problems in June 2003 (Greek-Turkish Youth Forest, Biodiversity
on the seas: Bosphorus and Aegean Sea, Tour of the Waste Recycling Facilities,
Panel: “The Role of the NGOs and Local Authorities on the Resolution of Urban
Environmental Issues”).
ENKA COLLEGE
Was established after the Marmara Earthquake, has a qualified education staff
in order to give a new direction to your life and having gained meaning to
it. After the Marmara Earthquake in 17 August 1999, ENKA Sports, Education
and Cooperate Foundation had decided to establish a Primary and High School
where 600 students can educated in Adapazarı in August, 1999. The aim of
Adapazarı ENKA Schools’ is to provide a good education possibility to those
children and to undertake the education free of charge including children who
lost their mother & father in earthquake or families who had lost material
and moral, all the education expenses including service, food, clothes and
stationary expenses.
www.adapazarienkaschools.com
TURGRESOC
Turkish-Greek Society is originally formed by Turkish and Greek students and
currently run by students from Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. The aim of TurGreSoc
is to strengthen the ties between the societies of Turkey, Greece and Cyprus,
to achieve a perspective of mutual understanding for solving the conflicts, to
explore the commonalities of these cultures and to create a lively and friendly
communication network. TURGRESOC organizes gatherings and forums are
organized at least twice a year in Greece and Turkey on a rotational basis. The
topics are chosen from disciplines such as politics, history, sociology and law.
www.turgresoc.org
WHAT’S WRONG WITH GREECE?!
Hello everybody! This is Meri Izrail from Bogazici
University, Turkey. I was a participant to the
first activity of the Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue
Project, at the “Rebuilding Communication” at
Sakarya. I am member of Turkish-Greek Student
Society (TurGreSoc), which is one of the most
active groups working for the rapprochement
between our countries. Since August 2002, we
have organized five student fora on a rotational
basis in Greece and Turkey, and sixth forum in
Cyprus in September 2004. We have also sent
representatives of our group to KayaFest and to
the Final Conference.
I am saying all these for you to understand that
I have some experience in Greek-Turkish related
youth work. Based on this experience I will allow
myself to ask a critical question on the issue:
What is wrong with Greece?
Meri Izrail
Member of the Steering Committee
of Turkish-Greek Student Society
As of April 2005, MA student in
College of Europe (Brugge, Belgium).
meri@turgresoc.org
No doubt, there is nothing wrong with Greece as a country, at least nothing
to be tackled in this Result Book. My point concerns rather the youth work in
Greece, more specifically the youth work on rapprochement with Turkey. My
experience indicates that there is a lack of motivation, if not of interest, from
Greek youth workers to such activities.
It almost always turns out more difficult to find participants from Greece than
from Turkey. Furthermore, Turkish youth NGOs are generally more eager to
organize Greek-Turkish related activities than their neighbors. I suppose it is
not random that a large-scale project such as the Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue
was carried out mainly by Turkish organizations and not by Greek ones.
Many reasons can be presented to explain this phenomenon, including political,
economical and sociological ones. My point, however, is not to stress the lack
of interest of our Greek counterparts to a rapprochement with Turkey. Rather,
I would like to point out to what can be done to work with this situation. What
can we, young people from both sides, do in order to increase the motivation of
the civil society for rapprochement in both countries?
Rebuilding Communication Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe