Building shared futures

"Building shared futures" is the theme title chosen this year for the 23rd Doha Forum, held in Qatar last weekend. The forum, which has been organized since the beginning of the present century, was at first held as the Al Jazeera Forum, an activity of Al Jazeera TV. Later the Forum was brought under the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs and took on the claim of being a diplomacy and dialogue forum on a global scale.

Every year, by bringing together from all over the world a large number of politicians, diplomats, journalists and intellectuals who also carry political representative weight in their fields, it tries to establish a global dialogue platform to discuss the critical challenges our world faces and to form innovative and action-oriented networks.

Under the heading "Diplomacy, Dialogue, Diversity," it claims to create a ground for the exchange of ideas and discourse aimed at policy-making and action-oriented proposals. After all, in a world where borders are permeable, the challenges we face and our solutions are interconnected as well.

We can say that Qatar, which has found a way, with a broadcaster like Al Jazeera, to become an actor influential not only in the Gulf or even among Arab countries but on a global scale, is, with the Doha Forum, on the way to making a serious difference in diplomacy and international dialogue as well.

In an atmosphere of freedom of thought and expression which the Arab world, unfortunately, largely lacks, the distance an Arab Gulf country has covered in this regard is a subject worth dwelling on in every respect. These are examples that set before us a very important horizon of what can be done when intellectual independence is achieved in the Islamic world. Moreover, even in the West, which has imposed itself as a reference on democracy and freedom of expression, in situations where freedom of expression falters, Al Jazeera, the Doha Forum, and Qatar as the country that brought both into being, can offer a much wider space of expression and maneuver. Indeed, on the question of Israel, Qatar, with these platforms, enjoys the privilege of being able to act independently of the constraints of a Western world that has exposed its suppressed fascism and surrendered.

These days we are living through a situation in which the rectors of America's most respected universities are being forced to resign merely on the grounds that they remained indifferent to criticisms directed at Israel and Zionism. In the U.S., which lives the reference experiences of all the discourses on the university ideal, with Zionist fascism having registered itself as the limit of the university and of freedom of expression, we can now speak of the End of the American University as well.

Yet at the Doha Forum many sessions were held on Palestine, Gaza, the Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel, and in most of them, of course, Israel's savage attacks were expressed and described as an open crime against humanity, a genocide, though, owing to the sensitivity of the situation, however difficult it was, opposing views were also given space. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, while explaining how helpless the UN structure has been regarding the solution of the problem, in a sense made a critique of the world order and stressed the necessity of establishing a new order. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, Ambassador Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian mission in the United Kingdom, Wadah Khanfar, head of the Al-Sharq Forum, and many others expressed Israeli oppression in the strongest ways at the forum.

In contrast, the U.S. Republican senator Lindsey Graham, in an interview held with him in a separate session, found the opportunity to express all the arguments of the Zionists in as reckless a manner as possible. All of Graham's words justifying a genocide in which ten thousand children have been savagely slaughtered were as nerve-racking and infuriating as could be. Personally, I held myself back with great difficulty while listening. I hoped to express my feelings in the question-and-answer part at the end of his talk, but there was no such part; he gave his talk and got up. Of course, as he was stepping down from the podium, I could not stop myself from going to him and expressing all my feelings.

It would of course not have been possible for a forum for which building shared futures was chosen as the title to be held indifferent to an attempted genocide that has been going on for over two months. In a world where there is an Israel that deems Apartheid rule fit for the people whose land it occupies in their own country, and, not content with that, tries to drive them out of their homeland, and finds support in doing so from the world's dominant powers, the title "building shared futures" actually stands like an irony addressed to a specific recipient. The Zionist occupation, which is being sustained with the official approval of the U.S. and Europe, is based not on sharing but on excluding, not on establishing an equal world together but on imposing unilateral decisions. In this form it constitutes the greatest problem of the world we live in: a serious problem that produces nothing but racism, intolerance, oppression and occupation.

Although, both because of its theme and because the genocide taking place is naturally humanity's foremost issue today, the main theme of the Doha Forum was the Gaza and Israel question, it was not its only subject. There were special sessions on all regions with certain instabilities such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq, with the participation of figures each competent in their field. In addition, with sessions that addressed all the priority problems and subjects on the world's agenda, from the climate problem to international law, artificial intelligence, science and governance, education, migration and the women's question, energy and renewable energy opportunities and even the possibilities of overcoming obstacles with behavioral science, inclusive economic systems and sustainable development, financial markets for humanitarian impact, and the role of partnerships between small states and the private sector, a kind of annual tally of international politics was kept and horizon-scanning tours for new policies were made.

As much as the subjects discussed, it offers participants an environment of meeting and dialogue that continues intensively for three days.

Within this diplomatic horizon that produces the Doha Forum, it is also important to note that Qatar has acquired a serious capacity for dialogue and mediation between conflicting parties in almost all conflict zones and has turned this into a mission. Through the Taliban officials to whom it offered shelter in its country, its contribution, by mediating in the end between the U.S. and the Taliban, to ending the occupation and establishing peace in Afghanistan cannot be forgotten. Doha is also the address where these days negotiations are being conducted among the U.S., Israel and Hamas on the prisoner exchange or the terms of a ceasefire.

This de facto mission of Qatar largely takes the Doha Forum out of being an activity consisting of intellectual discussions that reach no conclusion.