This week's second UNAOC Forum, held at İstanbul's Çırağan Palace, was unquestionably a successful event that will add extra impetus to the energy of Turkey to implement this plan. So let's see where we are. The national plans are critical documents that are drawn up so that the alliance can deliver actual political results. Coming together and speaking about the necessity of intercultural, people-to-people dialogue is nice, but the synergy that is created during those meetings should be turned into concrete projects and give birth to social, political and economic change. There is only one way to guarantee that outcome: the political will of the member states.
Turkey and Spain are the founding and sponsoring countries of the alliance. They are still the driving forces behind it -- or should I say the locomotives in front of it? These two countries should also be the role models in implementing their national plans. In fact, they were the first two countries that prepared national plans; the most detailed plan belongs to Turkey and the second to Spain. The national plans were first presented to the high representative during last year's forum in Madrid. The İstanbul forum was the first occasion to discuss the level of implementation of these plans. If the aforementioned countries had felt themselves in good shape in that sense, I am sure there would have been an evaluation session during the forum -- but there wasn't one.
A comparison of the national plans of Turkey and Spain reveals that when the plans were prepared there was much idealism and even overconfidence from Turkey and rather more realism from Spain. Today, Spain has managed to establish several academic institutions and realize several of the articles of its national plan, whereas Turkey has failed to come close to finalizing even a single entry in the long to-do list.
The second forum showed that Turks have not lost their faith in the alliance; that is not the problem. It is rather a problem of coordination. The Spaniards have left the coordination of the alliance plan to a single ministry. In Turkey the job is taken care of by three heads: one in the Prime Ministry, one in the Foreign Ministry and one in the office of State Minister Mehmet Aydın. Having multiple heads is not the real problem though -- the real problem is the fact that these heads don't have a body. The alliance does not have a secretariat, a building or any official organ in Turkey. Anything that needs to be done in the name of the alliance needs to be done in the name of something else. It does not have its own budget; it does not have its own personnel; it does not have its own network.
When the UNAOC was first established I thought of the necessity of an academic stronghold. It needed a university, an academic institution that can offer post-graduate degrees. Driving to the Çırağan Palace for the second UNAOC Forum, I saw the billboard ads for the Civilization Studies Center (MEDAM). How relieved I felt. The alliance had established a center to study civilizations, I thought. Later on I learned that this was a different initiative by Bahçeşehir University, though not completely unrelated. The chairman of MEDAM, Professor Bekir Karlığa, is currently also the chairman of the national coordination committee for the UNAOC. I am sure Professor Karlığa will add the extra momentum needed to move the national plan from the level of mere dreaming to action.
This year, Brazil, Portugal and Qatar presented their national plans. There is no binding UN resolution that obligates these countries to prepare and present national plans. But they did. This means that states want to obligate themselves to do something on the alliance front. Creating the idea of the UNAOC was a brilliant step, but if Turkey fails to implement its national plan it will also fail to be the locomotive of the alliance.
Brazil is more than willing to take its spot.
