Global Peace Conference in Istanbul
EUROPEAN INTEGRATION GROUP (EiG) PEACE CONFERENCE
“Peace at home, peace in the world.” -Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
This quote from the founder of our republic perfectly summarizes one of the greatest ideals that we should adhere to. We may be under the misconception that words would lose their importance with age, but when we think about what is happening in the world right now, we can easily realize that we should hold tightly onto the idea that Atatürk gave us.
Peace at Home, Peace in the World (PH), our international cooperation project that we, the European Integration Group (EiG), initiated to issue the most valuable call to all humanity for global peace, is turning one year old.
How did we set out for peace?
“Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.”
-Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795)
The desire for absolute peace is a phenomenon that has been influential since the beginning of humanity. According to many philosophers such as Kant, humanity should strive to realize this desire. As EiG, we strive to create a healthy public opinion that will come together for peace without any ulterior motives. Our project has emerged for this purpose.
Our project brought together dozens of people from Turkiye, Jordan, Lithuania and Lebanon who were interested in finding solutions to the escalating conflicts at the most significant levels since World War II. We focused on three areas to find these solutions: Peace at Home, Peace in the Region and Peace in the World.
Peace At Home
As EiG, we believe that peace can be achieved through understanding each other. In order to achieve this, we have focused our efforts on the situation of asylum seekers to whom our country extends a helping hand. Ensuring the basic rights and needs of those who come to our country fleeing from wars, the greatest shame of humanity, is of great importance for our ideal of striving for peace and human conscience.
In our research, we examined the needs and challenges faced by the communities under temporary protection in Türkiye. We believe that our country, acting with compassionate and effective policies, will set a precedent for the whole world with the sense of understanding and empathy that will be strengthened in our society.
Peace in the Region
We are close to the most hot regions of the world in terms of turmoil. To our north we have the Russo-Ukrainian War, to our south the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, to our east the echoes of the fading conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which has just ended and steps are being taken to move towards an agreed framework for peace, while to our west we have European states, including our own, where social well-being is threatened by mass movements of hatred against refugees. All these issues force us to look at the bigger picture for the requirements for peace.
We set out with partners who share the same
sense of empathy with us to find definitive solutions to the latest
developments in our region. With the NGOs Generations
For Peace from Jordan, AY Institute from Lithuania, and Development For
People and Nature Association from Lebanon, we are addressing the
problems facing our countries and striving to find solutions to these problems
by drawing strength from both our common feelings and our differences.
Our research, which also examined the situation in the countries of our partner NGOs, shows that the effects of the turmoil around them are similar to our own. Hoping that the day when these conflicts will end for all of us is near, the solutions we put forward together show the importance of providing the basic rights and needs of the victims of war, as well as approaching them with understanding and empathy.
In this project, which we set out with the support of each other, we believe that opposition to war should be done actively, with an olive branch in our hands.
It is our biggest dream that the olive branch, the symbol of peace, will be grafted onto the conscience of humanity and turn into a tree that will cover the whole world. Our project, which we realized with this dream, addresses not only the problems in our own countries but also the problems all over the world.
The wars in Ukraine and Palestine, which have escalated over the past two years, have once again shown us the importance of our conscience to have a voice. We fully support the efforts of the Republic of Türkiye, which has taken on the role of a mediator to put an end to these affronts to humanity, and we are giving all of our efforts to help.
We are crowning our project, the fruit of our efforts, with a Peace Conference to make an international call for peace.
A Call for Beautiful Days: Peace Conference
The Peace Conference, organized by EiG and its partners, will be held on December 9th at Müze Gazhane in Kadıköy/İstanbul with the presence of 200 people. We would be honored to see you at our conference where we will discuss the progress of our Peace at Home, Peace in the World (PH) project and the further steps we will take for global peace.
To participate in this meaningful event, which will be held in Istanbul – Museum Gazhane on December 9, 2023, for free, fill out the form and wait for us to contact you for details and your participation in the event. Don’t forget to follow us on our Instagram account @eig.ist to be informed about more current developments and view new projects.