INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE – FANTASY OR REALITY?
by Christine Gilmore

Zaman Online, Turkey
Sept 26 2006

Commentary

They say that most people are more comfortable with old problems
than with new solutions. That is especially true when it comes to
addressing the pitfalls of our increasingly multicultural world.

Yes, many of us live in cosmopolitan centres. Yes, we understand that
rubbing shoulders with people of different cultures is increasingly
inevitable. But when faced with the ‘other’ on our doorstep many
simply retreat into nostalgia, or the bosom of our communities.

The results of this mentality are reproduced throughout the towns and
cities of Europe where an unofficial policy of ‘separate but equal’
seems to rule. Cultural ghettos have sprung up across our urban centres
that place a physical as well as a mental barrier between migrants
and the national majority. When children go to separate schools, when
intermarriage is rare, and when employment opportunities restrict
social mobility meaningful intercultural interaction is rare indeed.

Most of us, in short, feel threatened rather than enlarged, by
difference. In times of peace and prosperity this attitude tends
to manifest itself as little more than abstract distrust. However,
in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks and in a climate of
economic uncertainty, it has transmuted into something altogether
more sinister. Recent years have seen the mainstreaming of xenophobic
policies across the political spectrum while extreme far-right parties
like Belgium’s Vlaamsbelang attract over thirty percent of the popular
vote in certain areas.

In such a climate, the concept of intercultural dialogue often
seems more like a bad joke than a realistic policy for dealing with
day-to-day life. Which is why it is all the more important that
organisations like Bahattin Kocak’s Turko-Belgian ‘Intercultural
Dialoog Platform’ exist to confront and combat intercultural
prejudice. To that end, a group of opinion-formers from journalists,
to academics and politicians assembled in the July heat in the lobby
of Brussels Zaventem Airport to depart for a week’s travel to Istanbul
and South Eastern Turkey.

Our goal was understood as two-fold. On the one hand, the organisers
were dedicated to deconstructing the myths about Islam, Turks
and Turkishness prevalent in Belgian society which, many assert,
have actively hindered the integration process. On the other, as a
critical juncture for the EU accession talks approaches this Autumn,
the visit provided us with an opportunity to assess those factors
which link and distance Turkey from European norms.

As far as I was concerned, however, there was a third and equally
pressing aspect to this trip. As a maudite Eurocrat living in the
bubble of Brussels’ Belliard quarter, with a smattering French and
total ignorance of Nederlands, the language of Flanders, I was almost
entirely unintegrated in Belgium. In my everyday life, like many who
work in the European Institutions, I barely met a Belgian, let alone
associated with them. Here, I was confronted with my minority status
– and the work that the EU has still to do to build bridges with the
Belgian community whom it lives around, rather than with.

That said, I left for Istanbul with little idea of what to expect
from either the visit or my companions, whom the language barrier had
initially reduced to forms rather than personalities. The names in
my head – Constantinople, Mardin, Sanliurfa – although tinged with a
certain exoticism were equally remote and undefined. As it turned out,
this hazy understanding was to be one of the most useful tools with
which I approached this sojourn.

Over the course of the week, both the members of our party and the
places we visited came to life in my mind, like paint on canvas. And,
at a level I was quite unprepared for, brought me from a passive
observer to an active participant in a cultural and historical
dialogue which took us from the Metropolis of Istanbul to the Cradle
of Civilisation on the Mesopotamian plain which has inspired most of
our collective history.

On landing, what immediately struck me was the multifaceted nature of
Turkish society, aptly symbolised by the Billboard babes and mosques
standing side by side in central Istanbul. Here, I realised, was a
country where religion and secularism, tradition and modernity vye
for the hearts and minds of its citizens. Not so unusual perhaps.

Except that the strong hand of Kemalist ideology seemed to paper over
multiculturalism to preserve the veneer of a homogenous nation state.

Nowhere was this more apparent that in the use of Article 301 of
the new Turkish Penal code to punish those deemed to be denigrating
‘Turkishness’. Merely one week before we arrived Hrat Dink, the
editor of an Armenian Newspaper, became the first writer to be
successfully prosecuted under this clause since its introduction,
setting a worrying precedent for other writers, religious leaders or
politicians who dare to challenge the status quo – even in only in
fiction, as the novelist Elif Shafak has discovered to her cost.

It wasn’t always thus. In the triangle between Diyarbakir, Mardin
and Sanliurfa in Turkey’s South East, Assyriac churches have stood
alongside mosques, synagogues and even sun-temples, for most of
recorded history. Here, it seems, coexistence was, and often is,
the norm. Here no grand narrative has eclipsed all others. Nor have
the signs of difference been neglected or destroyed in perpetuity.

Indeed, the tombs of the prophets – holy places for Jews, Christians
and Muslims – actively promote interfaith connections.

These ancient sites provide incontestable proof that diversity forms
an essential and inevitable part of every society. Yet too often, as
the Lebanese thinker Amin Maalouf makes clear, ideology and majority
interest tend towards suppressing or denying multiple identities.

This is as true of countries in the European Union struggling with
the vestiges of nationalism as it is true of the Turkish State, which
Europe has rightly criticised for lack of progress on minority rights
and freedom of expression.

Wherever we are from we must come to realise that identity cannot be
reduced to one common form. Europeans need to accept that an immigrant,
for example, can be both Turkish and Belgian or Muslim and European
just as I can be at once British and European. The formation of the
European Union has forced us to accept that no one language, culture
or set of belief can unite us all. Now we must learn to value our
Unity in Diversity necessary to make this grand project succeed.

It is one thing to accept tolerance and dialogue in theory, but yet
another to live it in practice. The Intercultural Dialoog Platform
allowed a small group of us, living on the same soil but with varying
backgrounds and languages, to interrogate our differences and learn
about each other. If nothing else it taught us that tolerance and
respect must come before all else in a world where multilateralism
and interdependence can no more be avoided than ignored.

Christine Gilmore is the Editorial Adviser to Graham Watson MEP,
Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)
in the European Parliament.