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Creating peace out of war
by
MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE
by
MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE
The word "war" voiced during the parliamentary debates on the government-initiated constitutional amendments package has no other meaning. Actually, Parliament is the name of the place where problems can be settled without fighting, isn't it?
The common values we develop and share, the institution we own and the rules we formulate are all for us to live together without fighting each other. The state, too, is an institution we develop so that we can live together securely and peacefully. Legal systems and the concept of justice are here to help us settle our problems with each other without violence. Democracy is a form of governance we jointly conceive of to attend to our work in common. The civilizations we develop and even our religious sensitivities lend support to our coexistence by providing a framework of meanings.
Turkey is trying to establish this framework of meanings. It is hard for us to leave our lives attached to weapons or our predisposition to look at everything from the perspective of conflict or fighting. For this reason, it is not very likely for us to quickly remove the words or phrases associated with blood or war from our political vocabulary. We need a period of transition and adjustment; we need time to get used to the constructive language of politics.
I was invited to Canada by the Canadian Institute of Intercultural Dialogue. This organization represents all people; it is both ambitious and prestigious. In a meeting with prominent figures from Canadian political and academic circles at the Canadian parliament in Ottawa, I listened to the common language and common denominators on which this prestige is based.
Canada is a country with an ambition for a multicultural lifestyle where cultural diversity is considered an asset. In order to be able to live together, you have to hold in high esteem the people who are different from you -- respect them -- and you have to try to understand them. The problems stemming from coexistence do not have ultimate solutions. The only working solution is to make coexistence with diversity a lifestyle and get used to continual problem-solving by keeping up with change. There will always be problems, and your continually produced solutions will make life livable for everyone. The solution which has proven wrong in numerous cases before is to impose your views on other people and expect them to abide by them.
You have to allocate your energy, attention and skills to the common denominators that make coexistence possible, and you must create a harmonious life out of contrasts. Everyone is obliged to redefine their place and role according to this common purpose. As it introduces a radical overhaul to its Constitution, Turkey is actually building the very experience and rules of coexistence.
The self-critique voiced by Constitutional Court President Haşim Kılıç during his speech at the ceremony of the anniversary of the establishment of the court should be considered a major opening for this common architecture. "The society is complaining about the judiciary," says this representative of the high judiciary. The starting point should be to listen to this complaint and shape the judiciary vis-a-vis the demands of society. No one has self-styled merits or no one has the ultimate truth; everything is for man, and people should be taken as the basis in determining these truths.
The Turkish community in Canada is trying not only to live as an equal and proud part of a multicultural society that pays respect to diversity, but also to contribute the assets of its own culture to this community. Those who desperately need this contribution are those in the motherland who try to formulate the rules of coexistence.
War does not breed peace, but we have to make war no longer a lifestyle.
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