Turkey's changing horizon between conferences

Turkey's change and development have many manifestations. One of them, I think, is its being the stage for an intensity of intellectual interest and activity that has spread to every province of Anatolia. Apart from the content of these events, the transportation and organization that each requires are in themselves integrated undertakings. Over the last few weeks, setting aside that I could scarcely lift my head from the conferences and symposia I attended in many provinces of Anatolia, headed by Ankara and Istanbul, when I add up also the conferences to which I was invited but could not go, I realized that an incredible level of scientific-intellectual activity had been reached.

Undoubtedly this level is closely related to Turkey's growing activity and importance at the national and international levels in recent years. We can say that beneath Turkey's growing activity in its region and in the world there is also a strong accumulation of knowledge nourished by such events. It is also something immediately felt that every event leads to extremely productive fusions of horizons with the scientists and men of ideas it brings together. Undoubtedly this development at the level of academic activity is closely related to two other important, even revolutionary, developments.

The first concerns the increasing number of universities. Universities, which previously were concentrated only in big cities, have today reached, with at least one in every province of Turkey, a number greater than one in many of our provinces. Each of the universities, numbering 165 in total together with the foundation universities, takes up many subjects concerning Turkey or the world and enters a race to put forth its own contribution. That is why the universities opened in every province of Anatolia work like a drilling rig set up in exactly the right place in the production of knowledge about the remotest corners of Turkey.

Each university, particularly its history, geography, literature and sociology departments, is busy producing knowledge of the local and including it in the total inventory of knowledge. Until five years ago universities competed only over an ideological fanaticism of secularism, whereas today the most important pressure on all universities is the race for better academic performance and for achieving a truly high quality so as to attract the best students. With these characteristics, among the Anatolian universities that have broken the tape we can single out Muş Alparslan University, Mardin Artuklu University and Çorum University.

The second is undoubtedly the developing cities and the local administrations that govern them. The universities established in every province make a very special and important contribution to the development of cities. A significant part of the Anatolian cities that formerly had a garrison at their center have now been caught up in a new dynamic of development that takes the university as its center. Universities, in cooperation with municipalities, put forward important models for creating a better quality of urbanization. Undoubtedly disasters such as the Van earthquake gave serious warnings that this cooperation is still very deficient.

During the past week, with the cooperation of the Çorum Municipality and the university, the second of the international symposia, the first of which had previously been organized under the title "City and Civilization," was organized under the title "The City in Ottoman Civilization." The third and fourth of this symposium, which was carried out with the encouragement and support of the young mayor Mustafa Külcü and under the general coordination of Prof. Mahfuz Söylemez, will focus in the coming years on "Republic and City" and "The City in the Future." The book containing the papers presented at the symposium held in 2007 was also distributed this year to those attending the symposium. At the previous symposium I had described this importance that Çorum displayed regarding the concept of the city, its history, philosophy, sociology and future, for a more qualified urbanism, as "the city that reflects on itself." The city was truly reflecting on itself, and it still continues to reflect. At the symposium, attended by some 60 academics who are experts on their subjects from home and abroad, papers each finer than the last were presented. Each of these papers is an important contribution to Turkey's urban science.

During the week, the Turkish-Arab Media Forum, organized by the General Directorate of Press and Information, convened with nearly 200 participants from the media of the Arab and Turkish worlds. In the forum, which took place with excellent organization, the roles of the media, civil society organizations and new social environments in the change under way in the Arab world were discussed, providing a veritable feast of culture and ideas for those following. The meeting of media representatives, who undoubtedly performed a very important function in the realization of the Arab spring, also constituted an important occasion for a priceless "fusion of horizons." That everyone approached the holding of such a meeting in Istanbul as a perfectly natural thing was itself a note that must be recorded.

One of the most important events of the weekend was the 5th Religious Publications Congress, organized by the Presidency of Religious Affairs. This year's topic was "women in religious publications." In the three-day, many-session congress, papers each finer, deeper and bolder than the last were presented and discussed. The congress was not limited to the subject of women in religious publications; it also carried out a productive discourse analysis and critique of the ways the subjects of women and gender are handled in religious texts, from the traditional to the modern. At the end of the congress a 22-article declaration of findings and recommendations on religious publications was also issued. Each of these articles, which contain strong sociological findings, is of a kind that will start new but productive debates. I would have liked to relay a few of them, but let me not strain the limits of my space any further. In any case the whole is on the Diyanet's page.