Videos
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6 June 2014Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, professor of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, states that “both Palestinians and Jews have one thing in common: Exile and need of recognition.” Can we define the Israeli collective rights starting from the recognition of Palestinian national rights? We interviewed Professor Raz-Krakotzkin during our Istanbul Seminars 2013. - 2 May 2014“With my colleague Cemil Boyraz we conducted a research on the Alevis in Turkey. One interesting result is that the opening with good intentions by the state, lead to great unity among the Alevi groups, but at the same time it lead to some disillusionment and disaffection among the Alevis considering the state, because their suspicions were reinforced,” explains Murat Borovali, Vice Rector of Istanbul’s Bilgi University. “They were not trusting the government’s motives initially anyway and for some their suspicions have just been reinforced. In that sense the opening itself may have even lead to a greater divide between the Alevis and the state, rather than to a rapprochement. Secondly, what we have seen is that the Alevis desire a platform to meet their needs, which is roughly a democratic constitutional measure and which – not only on paper but in practice also – offers and implements equal citizenship, equal religious rights and religious freedoms for all.” We interviewed Prof. Borovali during our Istanbul Seminars 2013.
- 23 April 2014“The problem with the notion of dialogue when thinking about global forms of Muslim militancy is that there appears to be no integrity, either on one side or indeed on the other”, explains historian Faisal Devji from Oxford University. “When you think about people like the brothers Tsarnaev in Boston, you have figures who are completely American and Americanized. It is impossible to think about them as somehow belonging to a closed ideological world of their own. Indeed, you can look at their violence entirely within the context of American forms of teenage or young-male violence, which includes school shootings or other forms of great damage. So how do they in fact differ from something, from a form of violence that is actually quite intimate to the United States?”. We interviewed Professor Devji during our Istanbul Seminars 2014.
- 16 April 2014“If you look at the broader region of the Middle East, what you observe is a large number of wars. Right now, a war is going on in Syria, another civil war is going on in Afghanistan, there is conflict in Libya, before that there was Iraq and Iraq is not finished yet, there was Lebanon…It looks like the region of the Middle East suffers from many different civil wars, suffers from a lot violent conflicts. Why does the wider MENA region continue generating wars, while armed conflicts declined worldwide after the Cold War?” asks political scientist Stathis Kalyvas, Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science & Director, Program on Order, Conflict and Violence at Yale University. The reasons are “international interests, transnational revolutionary factors and parochial, local divisions, but also stronger counterhegemonic ideologies which keep the conflicts going.” We interviewed Professor Kalyvas during our Istanbul Seminars 2013.
- Karen Barkey 8 April 2014“I think this is an incredibly important moment to think and to talk about the history of the Ottoman Empire, and that is why I am making an effort to put it out there.” Explains sociologist and historian Karen Barkey, a Professor at the Columbia University in New York and director of Columbia’s Institute for Religion Culture and Public Life. “We are living, in the Middle East, through a transition towards new democratic societies that is coming at the same time as the rise of Islamism and new Islamic political parties, so that the transitions are happening when the people are rethinking the role of Islam within the context of democracy. They are also looking at their past and at all the traditional ways of thinking about Islam and how to use it in modern, contemporary societies. Therefore, they are looking for usable pasts. I think that the Ottoman Empire is a really interesting usable past, because – even though it was explained and historically described as an Islamic empire – it was really an empire where religion was very much balanced within a lot of dualities that made it possible for it not to be hegemonic.” We interviewed Karen barkey during our Istanbul Seminars 2013.
- 7 April 2014“Being a historian I believe that one of the reasons for today’s problems with what we call ‘dialogue among civilizations’ in the Mediterranean area — precisely between the northern and the southern shore — is the result of an imprecise basic vocabulary” explains historian Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, a professor at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy. “That is why I am working on the construction of a sort of shared library: our authors and their authors, the pages we have read and those that our friends on the other side of the Mediterranean have read. But which are these 10 Mediterranean books which allow our discussion today to be one in which we understand one another?” We interviewed Professor Mascilli Migliorini during our Istanbul Seminars 2013.
- 4 April 2014“Being a historian I believe that one of the reasons for today’s problems with what we call ‘dialogue among civilizations’ in the Mediterranean area – precisely between the northern and the southern shore – is the result of an imprecise basic vocabulary” explains historian Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, a professor at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy. “That is why I am working on the construction of a sort of shared library: our authors and their authors, the pages we have read and those that our friends on the other side of the Mediterranean have read. But which are these 10 Mediterranean books which allow our discussion today to be one in which we understand one another?” We interviewed Professor Mascilli Migliorini during our Istanbul Seminars 2013.
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- Cengiz Aktar 1 April 2014“Europe! Believe in your potential, we, your neighbors, need you!” claims Turkish political scientist and columnist Cengiz Aktar. In order to become a more influential regional actor, in order to strengthen its relations with Turkey, Europe needs “more Europe”, which means that the European projects needs to be put back on track. “Here are my three tracks to put the European project back on the agenda”, explains Cengiz Aktar, “green economy, coexistence with Islam and the European enlargement project”. Cengiz Aktar is a Senior Scholar at the Istanbul Policy Center (Sabanci University, Istanbul) and a Professor at Bahcesehir University. As a former director at the United Nations where he spent 22 years of his professional life, Aktar is one of the leading advocates of Turkey’s integration into the EU. We interviewed Professor Aktar during our Istanbul Seminars 2013.
- Gholamali Khoshroo 26 March 2014“We must underline the importance of dialogue between Islam and the West, and we should overcome the historical difficulties that have divided them. The main condition for dialogue between the West and the Muslim world is: Western countries need to change their attitude and Muslims commit themselves to democratic norms, beyond the cliché that secularism means democracy and Islamism means dictatorship”, explains Gholamali Khoshroo, an Iranian scholar, Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Islam and former Deputy Minister of Mohammad Khatami.
