AEGEE-Ankara – The AEGEEan – AEGEE's online magazine – AEGEE-Europe

Dying B****, SUckers & Lots of Love

Lucy Hoogland — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 12:52:36 +0000

If you wander around AEGEE for a certain period of time, it is hard to miss the countless stories of Summer Universities (SU). Fellow AEGEEans might describe them as the best experience of their life, a great place to make life-long friends from other European cities and – for some – even a place for romance. SUtopia: An AEGEEan Myth organised by AEGEE-Ankara brought all of this to its participants. The combination of an ancient and modern culture, beautiful nature, the warmth and the most hospitable people imaginable, helpful organisers who were willing to face every challenge to make their participants happy, and a great and diverse group of people made this event an amazing experience for everyone involved.

The Summer University started out in Ankara, where the participants got a taste of the student life by being hosted on the campus of one of the best universities in Turkey. Some of the interesting features of student life in Ankara – among which a statue of a goat that was stolen by brave students from the mayor of Ankara, and the tendency of the students to hitchhike across the enormous campus – were proudly presented to the group by the organisers. After a slightly awkward arrival day, some of the organisers and helpers decided to break the ice by covering their poor participants in smashed chickpeas, shaving cream and chips.

As a reward for all the brave people who went through this, the program also involved visiting beautiful castles and other sights in Ankara, experiencing a Turkish mosque and hammam and finally chilling with some narghile (also known as shisha) and Turkish coffee.

Drinking Turkish coffee became an interesting experience thanks to the fortune telling skills that the organisers released on the remains of the coffee, skills they were even willing to share with the group. For the party animals within the group, the event started out great with the Turkish organisers presenting some original Turkish dance moves in the bus and got even better as participants could release their creativity on the countless thematic parties – among which a mythology party, a sailor party, a sexchange party, a karaoke party, and of course the European Night where there was also an exchange of traditional dances.

This came in handy when the group stumbled upon a real Turkish wedding and decided to crash it (well, of course with permission from the bride and groom – AEGEEans are decent people). Before the participants knew it, they were playing beer pong with the groom and dancing the polonaise with the bride. A Turkish wedding was not the only thing that was crashed though, as one of the most infamous incidents of the SU was the crashing of a golfcart by one of the female organisers.

After a wealth of impressions and the breaking – or rather smashing – of the ice in Ankara, the group went to Mugla, a touristic getaway with beautiful beaches in the South of Turkey. The program was less packed, but this wasn’t a problem as participant Reinier from AEGEE-Delft commented: “We were too busy fighting and gossiping to talk about what we were doing.” Indeed, the gossip box, that was previously been filled with dirty jokes – revealing some level of sexual frustration – as well as remarks about the lack of physical activities, started to be filled up with stories about couples emerging. As Anneli from AEGEE-Tallinn remarked “Forget about Paris. Turkey is the new country of love.”

The perfect blue water and sandy beaches combined with beautiful ancient cities did form quite a scenery for romance – although it might also be blamed on the convenience of the double rooms. Apart from visiting beaches and ancient towns, the participants were also spoiled with an amazing day on a boat, a very smelly, but in the end refreshing mud bath and a visit to a bazaar – where some of the participants ended up tasting Turkish delight and smoking narghile with the friendly shop owners for hours.

The time spent on the beach and in the sea became quite enjoyable due to the inventive new games made up by organisers and helpers. One of the most famous was the “die b*** die” game, involving a lot of hugging in swimwear as well as attempts to drown each other. When people needed to relax from all of this, there was the bus which also became known as the place where most of the sleeping happens, the place for Turkish dancing and the place for singing the “cup song”.

In the end, this is a story about a group of people who travelled from the beautiful castles and mosques of Ankara to the ancient cities and mesmerizing beaches of Mugla. They went from being covered in smashed chickpeas during a language workshop, to being covered in sweat and shower gel in a Turkish hammam (the sweat coming partially from the heat and partially from fear of the scary Turkish masseuses), to being covered in smelly mud and bright blue salty seawater in Mugla. Their gossip went from sexual frustration to a gossip box filled with stories of summer romances. And the participants went from a group of individuals from different cities in Europe to something that can almost be described as a family, a close-knitted group of people completely comfortable with each other and a group of new friends.

Written by Lucy Hoogland, AEGEE-Utrecht

AEGEE-Ankara on the establishment of a Youth Council in Turkey

Svenja van der Tol & Raluca Radu — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 12:42:55 +0000

On the 13th of July 2014, a Youth Council was established in Turkey, giving almost 30 different youth organizations the chance to cooperate between them. Among them, there is also AEGEE, represented for now by AEGEE-Ankara. The AEGEEan spoke to Turgut Tosun and Oğuz Tosun, member of the coordination group and boardmember of AEGEE-Ankara, to find out more.

On the 13th of January this year, fifteen youth organizations got together to discuss the proposition that was released by the government about setting a National Youth Council in Turkey. “According to the proposition, it was supposed to be established within the Ministry of Youth and Sport”, Turgut says. “However, the problem is that it would be controlled by the ministry and they would have the final word in case of a disagreement. This was a totally unacceptable case for youth organizations, so a group of five people made an arrangement with the ministry to discuss the current situation”. However, an agreement could not be reached, so the organizations kept working as a civil initiative with the aim of creating a civil youth council which would represent as many youth organizations in Turkey as possible.

Turkey’s youth has to deal with a lot of problems with the government, of which the arrest of several young people after the Gezi Park protests is just one example. “We were in contact and tried to share any outcomes of our meetings with the ministry, but after the Gezi Park movement and the policies of the government towards the young people of Turkey, we decided to temporarily suspend our relation with the government”, Turgut explains. “This council is an initiative to save youth from the fire in Turkey”, Oğuz adds. “If we implement this council properly, the youth can start to know themselves. We want to give the youth the chance to understand themselves, so they can change the world”.

AEGEE-Ankara got involved in the process of establishing the Council from the beginning, attending the first meeting in January and all the meetings taking place afterwards. Some representatives from other Turkish-speaking AEGEE locals also attended a few meetings, but so far AEGEE-Ankara is the only local involved in the Youth Council. However, there will probably be a Network Meeting organized to see how the Turkish-speaking AEGEE locals can get involved in the Youth Council, since AEGEE does not have a national level.

Moreover, the Youth Council cannot officially be called National Youth Council, because the use of the words ‘national, council, Turkey, initiative or platform’ is officially banned after the Gezi Park movement, but this does not mean the organizations have given up. “To use the word ‘national’ we need permission from the Council of Ministers of Turkey, which I don’t think we will have in the next fifteen years. Thus, we decided to call ourselves Gençlik Örgütleri Forumu – GÖF or Youth Organizations’ Forum”, Turgut explains.

The expectations for the work that can be done with the Youth Organization Forum are high. “I think the youth in Turkey has a great chance to act in many fields, from democracy to environment”, Oğuz says. “I believe this is the best thing for young people. Before we start to change things on a local level, we want to observe as much as possible different examples all over the world. The youth in Turkey can bring the local and international actions together to change the system in Turkey. Wish us luck and power!”

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen & Raluca Radu, AEGEE-Cluj Napoca

AEGEE and the Subtleties of Peacebuilding

Thomas Leszke — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 13:26:07 +0000

“Against. – Against. – Against. – …” At the Agora Zaragoza, the Focus Area named “Peacebuilding” received a clear negative vote. Does that mean that AEGEE is not interested in this topic, or do we believe we don’t have the capacity to work on it? Or is there a different explanation? – A short inquiry into one of our favourite misconceptions.

Peace in Europe is a normality for most of us. This doesn’t mean that we do not have conflicts, but at there have been only a few occasions in the last 68 years where Europeans have taken up arms to settle disputes. For a reason that you will come to understand in the course of this article, I am not going to mention any regions here as ‘examples of armed conflicts in Europe’. But most of us have probably have heard about some of the conflicts that have taken place in Europe recently.

In AEGEE, the way we speak about these conflicts sometimes reminds me of the way my grandma used to speak about her quarreling grandchildren. “C’mon kiddos, don’t be bad, if you stop fighting and just forget about your argument you will get some of my cherry cake!” You may remember that when you were a kid, you weren’t particularly fond of such interventions (even if you were fond of cake), simply because your quarrel was your own business, and you felt that you weren’t being taken seriously.

Now an armed conflict is a bit different from children quarreling. This seems like a redundant statement, but I believe we need to realise that we are not talking about a boy who destroyed his brother’s Lego castle. Forgiving and forgetting becomes difficult when your father was killed, your sister raped, your house burnt and your society filled with thoughts of hatred and revenge. Trauma is still there, even when the last survivors of the war are dying of old age. Peacebuilding after war is something that takes generations.

We have quite a number of Locals in our network that are located in areas which have been affected by armed conflicts over the past decades. For me it was interesting to observe that nearly all of the locals from these areas (with only two exceptions) voted against Peacebuilding as a Focus Area. It made me wonder about why this Focus Area was proposed in the first place – had anyone ever approached these Locals for their opinion? I have been asking the delegates who voted in the plenary to comment on their decision and I will to let two of them speak for themselves.

In the words of Mert Can Yılmaz (AEGEE-Ankara):

“Our argument was that we have already chosen four big topics. Each of them has several aims. […] And we think that working in detail is better than achieving aims superficially.”
“On the other hand, we thought peacebuilding […] is a little difficult issue in Eastern Europe.”
“As AEGEE-Ankara, we’d like to work on peacebuilding. Besides, we have already been working on it. As an example, we did the Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue Project. And the AEGEE-Ankara Turkish-Armenian Working Group has done a project and sereval events. We are looking for more.“

Silvija Perić (AEGEE-Zagreb) adds:

“I’m not saying we’re against the “Peacebuilding”, but we thought it wouldn’t work out as a Focus Area since people feel annoyed when others give advice or try to help with dealing with situations they can’t possibly understand.”
“I love mediation, but you have to know when you can use it and when is best to wait patiently until there is space for compromise and work. We should do peacebuilding, but as careful observers who are not here to judge, give advice nor trying to ‘make things better’. We should be the ones who will go there to help them with what they need, to listen, to be friends with them and in the end, just be there for them, understanding that sometimes being there next to them in silence tells and helps more than words.”

Who could have said it better?

I still believe that AEGEE has a huge potential for peacebuilding. But it is not our task to settle territorial disputes or find a political balance in a conflict of interest. We are not in a position to mediate or give advice, and we should not try. What we are good at -and what is needed, goes along Silvija’s last lines: creating friendship, understanding and solidarity, just by bringing people together and so we realise that we share the same interests, worries, and love for life. And if the situation allows it -with some intelligent facilitation, it may be even possible to “talk about it”. But that should not be our main objective.

As AEGEE-Ankara’s example shows, we have achieved important things in the past. We have a unique capacity to build bridges where others can’t. Now we have decided not to have a Focus Area about it, but that doesn’t mean we must be idle. Maybe it is even better not to have a Focus Area, because that might have created wrong (result-oriented) expectations.

Peacebuilding, in this broader understanding, should be our daily ambition, in every event we organise. Our societies are full of small conflicts and misunderstandings, prejudices and stereotypes, ignorance and mistrust that we can help resolving. And by doing so, we probably make a greater contribution to our Europe without borders than we will ever realise.

Written by Thomas Leszke, AEGEE-Köln

Local of the Month AEGEE-Ankara “Every inspirational project needs a thematic background”

Patricia Anthony — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:16:51 +0000

This month the honour of Local of the Month goes to AEGEE-Ankara: an active local many interesting Projects and Working Groups and this article gives you an insight into the world of AEGEE-Ankara.

The AEGEEan: Congratulations on becoming Local of the Month, how does this honour make you feel?

AEGEE-Ankara: It directly makes you smile when you see an e-mail that was dropped to your inbox! Then, you understand that as whole local, we have been doing inspirational activities for a long time. It is a success that was achieved by many people in years.

What is the story behind AEGEE-Ankara?

AEGEE-Ankara was founded in 1993 by a group of young people from the Middle East Technical University and accepted to AEGEE Network during Fall Agora Budapest in 1995. Later on, AEGEE-Ankara became one of the most active locals of AEGEE-Europe. Integration of Ankara into AEGEE is perceived as a revolution because AEGEE decided to break dogmas about modern European borders and brought a new conception to “Europe of values”. Currently, AEGEE-Ankara has more than 250 members and many projects running.

Can you tell a little about your exchange project with AEGEE-Utrecht?

This exchange aims to discuss where LGBT is standing in a society within the framework of biphobia, homophobia and transphobia and whether they are given a ‘place’ in a society or not. The thematic part of the project is intended to be handled considering every aspect of LGBT Rights via presentations, panels and workshops in both Turkey and the Netherlands. The project has been in works since EBM İzmir and now, both antennae completed their thematic works and project documents. In the meantime, both antennae have been searching for possible funds and also are in contact with each other, aiming to realise the project this summer called “Meet me with me Under the Rainbow”, with exchanges to take place both in Ankara and Utrecht.

What project and working groups do you have in your local?

Currently, there are three projects group and two working group in AEGEE-Ankara.

We have one Project Group Under the name of “SUNSET: SUstainable Nature, Sustainable EntertainmenT”, Summer University Project Group of AEGEE-Ankara which is working hard on our TSU taking place this summer. Another Project Group concerns “EURENSSA” which has been organised every summer since 2006. It’s a project organised by students for students. The main aims are to create a meeting place for students with a background of studies in environmental sciences and sustainable development. It is an open-air event lasting usually 7-10 days, and AEGEE-Ankara is planning to organise EURENSSA on the coast of Aegean Sea in the summer of 2013. Participants from different countries and culture will together with the organisers take part in thematic trainings and workshops on sustainable environment and organic agriculture while enjoying Aegean Sea and natural beauties of Aegean region.

Regarding the Working Groups there are three: One of them is dealing with the exchange with AEGEE-Utrecht, another is involved with the Turkish-Armenian work that AEGEE-Ankara does and the third is an International Political Working Group which since 2000, has been actively working on political issues around the world. The group especially is focusing on European Union and its structure, Turkey –EU relations and Visa freedom. IPWG of AEGEE-Ankara is also trying to keep in touch with IPWG of AEGEE-Europe frequently.

What is the Turkish-Armenian Civic Dialogue project with AEGEE-Yerevan?

It began with the project “Two Sides of a Mountain” which was implemented in 2009 in Hatay with participants from Armenia. Recently, the Turkish-Armenian Working Group has been writing a project document for Turkish-Armenian Civil Dialogue The project group started to work on a new project under the name of ‘Neighbourhood of Under the Roots (NOUR)’ which will take place in Yerevan. NOUR Project aims to reveal the common cultural heritage and how we are willing to live together. Cooperating with AEGEE-Yerevan, we truly want to put this exciting project in practise. Just like last year, the group is trying to manage a trip to Yerevan this spring in order to organise NOUR closely with AEGEE-Yerevan. Till the end of the year, the group will manage to organize panel discussions, trainings on hate speech and conflict resolution, and Turkish-Armenian Peace Nights. According to Peace and Stability field, we are going to continue to work on this topic.

You have also had the Turkish-Greek dialogue in the past. What was it about, is it something that will continue?

Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue project has been one of the large-scale and long-term projects of AEGEE marking one of our main pillar Peace & Stability for three years. The project was not the only initiative in AEGEE focusing on establishing dialogue between Greek and Turkish young people, and luckily it was not be the last one. After establishment of AEGEE locals in Turkey in the 90s, AEGEE realised the necessity of establishing such a dialogue thanks to its own experience and relations between Turkish and Greek AEGEE members those days. Expansion to the East and accepting a local branch of Turkey has been a largely discussed issue within the AEGEE network. Once AEGEE-İstanbul was accepted to AEGEE network in the early 90s, there have been a lot of discussions in AGORA-Kos. Later on, when AEGEE-Ankara was accepted to the network in 1995 in AGORA-Budapest, there were still tensions between Greek and Turkish members of AEGEE. AEGEE experienced the negative consequences of Turkish-Greek conflict itself and focused its activities on peace-building between two countries as an organisation acting for peace and stability. In the end, the idea of “Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue” project raised from this conflict and tension that we all experienced. It aimed exactly to help young people to know each other better within and without AEGEE, lasted 3 years and hosted conferences, workshops, festivals and warm relations between young people of both countries.

Recently Burcu Becermen became honoury member of AEGEE, how does this make you feel?

Burcu Becermen was the project manager of Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue, projects director and president of AEGEE-Europe. She was also honorary member of AEGEE-Ankara with other other members. When she was nominated for honorary member of AEGEE-Europe by Comité Directeur, we were proud of her one more time. She was a great inspiration to almost every member of AEGEE-Ankara. When we are telling about AEGEE and AEGEE-Ankara to new members, we always mention her and Turkish Greek Civic Dialogue project.

Do you promote the European Level of AEGEE to your members in order to make them become more active in AEGEE?

As AEGEE-Ankara, we promote the European Level of AEGEE to our members in order to make them become more active in AEGEE as much as possible. For example, Gizem Karslı from AEGEE-Ankara was part of the Comité Directeur last year. Recently, one of our members is currently working in EuroArab Project as HR and another one is working in AEGEE-Europe Events Committee as PR. Additionally, we always mention AEGEE-Europe, its structures, working and project groups during our local Agorae, local trainings and acquaintance meetings of AEGEE-Ankara to newbies. Hence, we are regularly sharing all the announcements of European Level Events, AGORAe, EBMs and NWMs with our members via social media and informing them the content of these events. We encourage especially our new members to attend Agorae and EBMs as visitors in order to help them gain AEGEE experience and spirit.

What lies in the future of AEGEE-Ankara? Are you organising more thematic events?

We are sure that every successful and inspirational project idea needs a thematic background in order to raise our member’s knowledge and gain more awareness. Since we are specifically paying attention to thematic achievements in AEGEE-Ankara, our events have been developed from thematic backgrounds. Besides our motivated members, we tend to have partners on our projects from any areas that we are working on. Help of other organisations on our projects as partners are always welcome and we believe that it increased success of our projects.

It is great to see thematic forming an important part of local work in AEGEE and it will be interesting to follow the outcomes of whatever AEGEE-Ankara has planned in the future.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København

AEGEE-Ankara says No!

AEGEE-Ankara — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:15:58 +0000

On 3rd October 2012 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey allowed officially with a so called “War Memorandum” to attack Syria. Therefore, AEGEE-Ankara likes to express its opinion on the decision made by the Turkish parliament:

As it can be seen in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan in the past, any military intervention has not promulgated “democracy and freedom” in any occupied country and it will promulgate neither in Syria. It is needed to shut down internal and external war policies, initiated by AKP Government and Ahmet Davutoğlu, Foreign Affairs Minister of Turkey, because any possible military intervention will cause and inflict a deep wound in the memories of people living in the Middle East.

As AEGEE-Ankara, we declare that we are against any possible military intervention by especially Turkey and other states against Syria. We postulate the “War Memorandum” being withdrawn and we demand that the necessary steps should be taken by the government for an honourable peace and a democratic solution!

Written by AEGEE-Ankara

Remark by The AEGEEan: AEGEE-Ankara is responsible for the content of this article.