Conference Papers
Not Wars but Cultures Should Spark one Another
Sezer Duru
| Sezer Duru, |
It is a well-kown fact that cultural relationships between peoples of different countries play an important role in bringing those peoples closer to one another, help develop mutual understanding and sympathy and at the same time trigger of new impulses of creativity.
But in this enough, today, to secure the world peace we are longing for?
We all remember very well how impatiently and almost lustfully the Anglo- Saxon world was prepared to bomb Iraq a short time ago. If this bombing had taken place, not only soldiers but thousands of children, women and non-military people would be killed and unrepairable injuries would be afflicted. By technology shows like this, peoples of Islamic faith are pushed irreversibly to cling to fanatism. This is one of the main reasons of a return to fundamentalism observed in Islamic countries today. Another important reason is the great imbalance between levels of development in the world. Inequality has always been a threat to peace. Besides this unequaled development, nations´domestic ruling classes propagate historical conservatism and despotism. What we witness today is that USA, which has become the sole world power, beats the world to submission, imposes the culture on others, fortifying its world dominance.
World wars are to high a risk to run but regional conflicts safely provide the rich nation with sweet opportunity of making money, getting richer.
Modern industry seems to become more and more dependent on war industries for survival. For this reason the call to peace of man of culture unfortunately has but little effect. To increase the number of people believing in peace, it is essential that cultural contacts be established all over the world, cultural education be given and anything be done to enable different peoples to get to know one another´s art and culture. It is the responsibility of people who are committed to peace to try their best to affect the politicians in their countries. However we should not be very optimistic about it.
I think, when the theme "The role of culture in areas of conflict" was chosen as a theme in this conference the region in question were ones where hot wars are being fought: Turkish- Kurdish PKK, Philistine-Israeli, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Kosova-Serbia, Caucasian conflicts. The hot war continuing in my country, Turkey, and other hot wars in the neighbouring regions have caused deaths and injuries for million of people and many people have been uprooted from their native geography and emigrated to other regions. The cultural shock and vital problems these wars have brought about are so great.
At this point I want to draw your attention to a different conflict. The conflickt is not only that between fighting parties. In the West, in spite oft talks of cultural¹multiplicity, references are made to cultural wars and differences in the levels of civilizatio. This triggers a reaction in the Islamic intellectuals in the East.
In spite of all the movements of enlightenment, open-mindness, which we regard so highly, does not yet rule over the world. It is still the preducies, both in the East and in the West. However West has a greater responsibility because it has been the colonialism and self-assertion of the West which has nurtured inequality in the world for hundreds of years. What is more, this is not a past phenomenon. it still continues in several forms.
In the past when we Turkish writers came to Sweden we used to be almost questioned in many ways by our Swedish writers friends about the political situation in our country. Some of our counterparts treated us as we were political responsible for it. They did not know how we fought against wrong policies and politicians responsible for it., how we suffered from oppression in different forms and loss of freedom. Man of culture in the West, on the other hand is estranged, as he consider himself superior and does not really want to get to know other cultures. The intellectual endeavors of Claude Lévi-Strauss have not been enough to bring down these prejudiced structures altogether. There is another drawback for man of the West ( there may be som exceptional cases of course ): He is reluctant to point to the wrong foreign policies of his country, prefers to keep silent, does not much to bringpolitial wrongdoings to public attention. The freedom and welfare he enjoys in his country has made him blind to some realities in the world. For example, it is said that Iraq has got biological and chemical weapons. But it never occurs to people to ask where, bu which Western country these weapons has been produced and sold. If there are people who buy these goods, this means there are other people who produce and sell them. We know what happens to some intellectuals who mentions these facts even in those vere democratic Western countries. It is this phenomenon that fortifies our belief in the double-headedness of the West.
It is a pity that the intellectualt in any part of the world no longer share the conviction that poltics and morality should go hand in hand. Political morality has collapsed. This collapse has brought othets with it. Universities cooperate with ²military industry² that finances researches to develop armament. In my opinion, it becomes everywhere more and more difficult to find an intellectual with moral integrity, political consciousness and thruthfulness. The biggest danger we face today is the commercialization of the intellectual. This is what has happened in our country too.
What can people in conflicted areas think of, but how to survive from day to day ?
Would they look for solace in cultural activity ? Or would they turn to their own cultural heritage and start a sad sorrowful song ? If you look at the matter from this perspective, you cannot talk of the role of cultur in conflicted areas. Have we not seen different ethnical groups living in the same cultural environment and even groups of the same ethnic origin jumping down one another´s throat when political interests conflict ?
As I said before, if we can increase the number og people committed to the ideal of peace, then they can become a source of power to anticipate new conflicts. The protest of the American University students was an impressing example of this during Iraqi crisis.
I want to end my speech with the following words ot the valuable Turkish sociologist Ismail Besikci, who has been in prison for years because of his thoughts and the strange laws in my country, whose name is known almost worldwide and from whom the politician do not seem to be sorry:
" The responsibility of the Western, European Human Rights organizations should be to criticize their own governments, their own states for giving political, ideological, economical and military support to systematic state terrorism and they should never cease to do that "
State terrorism of Western countries is not the question in the inside in their own country, but something directed to the outside, to other countries.
Sezer Duru