\u00bbMy way of looking at what is happening in Turkey is the perspective of a German-Turkish woman, and that is also the perspective that will form the basis of this talk. We all grew up here, attended German schools, and this is where our socialization took place. The understanding we have that we are due certain rights \u2013 whether freedom of opinion, expression, civil rights \u2013 has influenced the way we think and act. This is something that differentiates us from the same generation in Turkey, which doesn\u2019t have this same understanding. How do we German Turks look at\u00a0 Turkey as a homeland that has left behind traces in our lives, our upbringing, the paths we have taken in life, our family histories? These traces have been shaped by the notion, by our parents\u2019 dreams of a homeland that is no longer ours. Since the events in Gezi Park, a new generation in Turkey is demanding rights that are normal for us. We German Turks look at this movement in\u00a0 Turkey with a kind of longing for our homeland, which is marked by affinity and memories. The women who will be talking to me are women who \u2013 in their work as journalists, authors, filmmakers and politicians \u2013 will be discussing and putting up for discussion their personal view of Turkey.\u00ab
\n\u2013 Aysun Bademsoy<\/p>\n
\u00bbAlthough Turkey has never been a role model for democracy and human rights, I have been observing the developments there for the past eleven years with a great deal of worry. The extensive state interference in private life, an increasingly dictatorial government, censorship and corruption were practically an invitation to the Gezi protests to happen. The movement came perhaps too late, but it still constitutes an enormous gain for the Turkish people: there is finally some tolerance for those who think differently, believe differently and have a different ethnic background!\u00ab
\n\u2013 Can Erdo\u011fan-Sus<\/p>\n
\u00bbSummer 2013 in Istanbul: I met people from Istanbul who were impressed about the fever that a city can develop when the population is fed up to its back teeth. When the wrath of an East Anatolian mixes with the hot temper of a Black Sea Turk, with the energy of students and the self-confidence of an old Armenian woman. When these people managed to shake up a country within a few days together, then they were all proud to be Istanbulites. But happiness, they know, is something else.\u00ab
\n\u2013 Mely Kiyak<\/p>\n
\u00bbMy understanding of homeland follows Bloch\u2019s philosophy. He writes in The Principle of Hope: \u00bbIf (an individual) has grasped himself and established what is his, without exploitation and alienation in real democracy, there arises in the world something which shines into the childhood of all and in which no one has yet been: homeland.\u00ab This understanding of homeland is where the principle of hope can be found and it is not bound to any particular time or place. I share this view: we are not born in a homeland, far more we create a homeland for ourselves through our encounter with the world. And when we succeed in the sense Bloch alluded to, the world becomes our homeland. Seen in this way, the Gezi unrest has become the homeland of the democratic movement in Turkey and, seen in a broader sense, it has become a homeland for all democrats.\u201d
\n\u2013 Dr. Lale Akg\u00fcn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","movie_cat":[351],"event_cat":[],"event_type":[127],"festival":[565],"class_list":["post-20350","event","type-event","status-publish","hentry","movie_cat-focus-en-2014","event_type-discussion-en","festival-2014-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n