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The
Turkish American Conference on Technoogy, Business and
Culture
May 12 - 14, 2004 in Hoboken,
New Jersey;
was
jointly organized by
http://www.stevens.edu/main/home/
&
http://www.beykent.edu.tr.
The
Mirror of the Day
Written for the Light Millennium.
by
Alp IÇOZ
 |
 |
 |
| Howe
Conference Hall @Stevens, Hoboken |
Dr.
Harold J. Raveche,
President
of Stevens Institute of Technology |
Dr.
Yusuf Ziya IRBEC, Rector of Beykent University,
Istanbul |
Photographs by Marta CURRY
"It
is much easier to break the atom into pieces than break
the prejudice of human being."
Albert EINSTEIN
Just a day before the Turkish Parade, filling up the
Manhattan streets with thousands of Turks from all over
the U.S. and the visitors from Turkey on Saturday, 15th
of May, 2004, a very important three-day conference
about the relations between the U.S. and Turkey was
held at Howe Center in Stevens Institute of Technology
in Hoboken, New Jersey on 12th, 13th, and 14th of May,
2004.
The
purpose of this conference, organized by Stevens
Institute of Technology and
Beykent University, was to create a forum for advancing
the frontiers of Turkish-American cooperation in business,
technology partnering, government and cultural understanding.
I had the opportunity to attend only the sessions on
the last day of this event, in which a number of distinguished
speakers participated but only about hundred people
attended. I believe that such a conference with its
rights and wrongs widen the visions of most of the
participants and guests about what the present level
of the relations between the U.S. and Turkey is, and
how an important progress can possibly be made in
this continuously changing world order making these
two countries much closer
than before. Prof. Dr. Nevzat Yalcintas, Vice President
of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) and Head of the Turkish Delegation, Mr. Ismet
Yilmaz, Under Secretary of Maritime Affairs of the Republic
of Turkey, Ambassador (retired) Charles F. Dunbar, and
Mr. Paul Tummima, Director for Turkey IS in Russia,
Export Import Bank were the speakers of the panel on
government in the morning, hosted by Dr. Yusuf Ziya
Irbec from Beykent
University. The last speaker of the morning session
was Dr. Mehmet C. Oz,
Professor of Surgery and Chief of Cardiovascular Institute,
Columbia University-Art
of Healing: Meditation and Western Medicine.
Dr.
Harold J. Raveche, President of the Stevens (right)
and Dr. Yusuf Ziya IRBEC,
(left) jointly organized and hosted the conference.
After the Lunch break, there was an academic session
about Offshore IT Outsourcing Instructed by Prof. Abdullah
Uz Tansel (CUNY) in another conference room. After that
short session in the second panel of the day, which
was on Current Issues and Society: Public Perceptions
of the U.S. and Turkey, Mr. Alaaddin Yuksel, Governer
of Antalya, Mr. Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, and
Prof. Richard Bulliet, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies,
Columbia University were the and followed by Dr. Harold
J. Raveche, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Dr.
Yusuf Ziya Irbec with their concluding remarks.
Prof.
Dr. Nevzat YALÇINTAS: The collaboration between
Turkey and the superpower of the world could contribute
considerable assets for global peace and stability in
a fragile geography...
Prof.
Dr. Yalcintas with his great experience and knowledge
in Turkish politics and constitution pinpointed some
important issues after summarizing the Turkish-American
relations from the eighteenth century to the present.
In his long speech, with which he was famous, he expressed
that Turkish-American relationship was essential for
maintenance of peace, stability, and prosperity as well
as preservation of freedom and democracy in the wider
geographies of mutual concern. While emphasizing the
importance of "mutual understanding", he mentioned
about the necessity of close consultation, coordination
and cooperation with each other in many issues such
as conflict prevention and crisis management, containment
of regional conflicts, preventing proliferation of weapons
mass destruction and combating international terrorism
and extremism of all sorts, illegal drug trafficking
and other manifestations of organized crime. He added
that the collaboration between Turkey and the superpower
of the world could contribute considerable assets for
global peace and stability in a fragile geography as
well as the transatlantic relations, which were in systemic
transition. Additionally, he condemned terrorism based
on religion and the tragic event of September 11, and
also the disgracing treatment and interrogation methods
used towards Iraqi prisoners by the American soldiers,
also admitting that even if they tortured, they should
not have humiliated the prisoners.
A
group of Turkish students during the conference @Stevens.
Second speaker was Mr. Ismet Yilmaz, Under Secretary
of Maritime Affairs of the Republic of Turkey and
he basically gave a lot of information about
the maritime trading, Turkish Maritime Administration
and the maritime sector in Turkey, mentioning that Turkey
was a bridge between regions and the continents including
Europe, Asia and North Africa. He said that the main
shipyard of Turkey was in Tuzla, Istanbul.
*
* *
The
speaker, Prof. Dr. Sait Acba as the President of the
Planning and Budgeting Commission of the Grand National
Assembly of Turkey
pointed out the importance of the geographical and geopolitical
positions of Turkey in the world stage, and also the
fact that Turkey had a great investment advantages with
a billion-population market around it. He underlined
the importance of decreasing inflation, and explained
how successful Turkey's giant steps to reduce the inflation
rate from 60% to 14% was in 2003, and the next year's
goal would be 12%. He said that the domestic market
in Turkey was growing very rapidly while the private
sector was catching up with the international standards,
and the new laws related to foreign investors were going
to be applied.
Prof. Dr. Sait Acba
mentioned that establishing a company in Turkey took
only one day nowadays;
the article of "the minimum capital of $50,000
to open a company" was abolished and over all,
the foreigners had the same rights as Turkish
citizen
had. He
completed his speech by emphasizing that Turkish economy
got a momentum; the growth speed and export had been
increased, and a bright and hopeful future was waiting
for Turkey.
Ambassador
(Retired) Charles F. DUNBAR: During the Cold
War the U.S. had three interests of core in Middle East
such as Soviet power; petroleum reserves and enhancing
Israel have a secure environment.
The
retired Ambassador Charles F. Dunbar was one of the
American speakers of this conference, with a lot of
experience in the matters related to the minority Turkish
populations in every country he served. He opened his
speech by mentioning about the security policy of the
U.S., and the sharp dilemmas in dealing with the international
relations, especially the Moslem world's authoritarian
governments. He said that during the Cold War the U.S.
had three interests of core in Middle East such as Soviet
power; petroleum reserves and enhancing Israel have
a secure environment. Ambassador Dunbar added that starting with President Jimmy
Carter, the U. S. began the bilateral relationships
in good-bad
side manner, and continued this foreign policy until
September 11, 2001.
He pointed out that the U.S. was working on the problems
in Iraq, Iran, Syria
and Egypt while Pakistan was becoming a NATO ally controlling
the territory in the border of Afghanistan, and the
most important country for the U.S.; Saudi
Arabia's government was making developments, and in
Libya Kaddafi's heart
was changing after 9/ 11.
He also accepted that the U.S. cradled and created
big problems with other Moslem countries by occupying
Iraq and had better leave Iraq as soon as possible.
Finally he ended his speech by the importance of Turkey's
decisive approach, and moving forward because of the
invasion, but made such a big improvement to continue
to be a true friend even after all the tense conditions
with the U.S. during the negative effects of the invasion
was going on.
* * *
Mr.Paul
Tummina, Director of Turkey and IS in Russia of Export
Import Bank, supporting the export from the U.S. to
other countries, said that Ex-Im Bank functions as an
export creditor in loans, guarantees and insurances,
and added that the bank loaned Turkey over $1.2 million
spent on extensive programs such as energy (40%), aircraft
(23%), transport and medicine. He mentioned that there
were five important issues affecting the bank's decisions:
foreign content, restricted countries, military export
(exception), credit worthiness, and environmental factors.
Dr.
Mehmet OZ: The bad habit of eating colorful food, carbohyrade,
all whites including white sugar, salt, milk, and having
no exercises were the mean reasons of the most diseases
in Turkey.
The
last speaker of the morning panel was Konya born Dr.
Mehmet C. Oz, Professor of Surgery and Chief of Cardiovascular
Institute in Columbia University, who has own program
on in Discovery Channel and whom also the
famous TV show host Peter Jennings interviewed before,
gave us a very
useful briefing, of which every word had a great importance
in human life
and the fields of medicine. He expressed the difference
between a cardiologist,
who uses heart devices and a surgeon, who uses medical
operations. He mentioned about the innovative methods
in cardiovascular field like using the implantable pump
system in the heart, a robotic device, a PVT device,
and a valve clip presenting an audio-visual show related
to all what his speech was based on. It was pretty amazing
to see the two robotic hands operated by a cardiologist
cutting and sewing the heart without any mistakes. In that
part of speech, he basically focused on the reasons
of heart attacks including intact plague in the vein
walls, major depressions (1/5 of heart diseases), ejection
fraction, and living alone, which was a chronic
illness.
He also emphasized that the reasons of the delayed recovery
were
the fear of unknown, the insufficient caretaker protection,
missing technology
advances and taking non-customized medicine, and added
that the level of obesity was mostly caused by
the cheap preserved food (fast food) both in
the U.S. and Turkey. Dr. Oz pointed out the importance of the
good fats for human body such as fish oil, olive oil
and hazelnut oil, and explained that the ways of slowing
down aging and having a healthy body, costing $100,000
a year in the U.S, were to keep ourselves out of the
sun (danger of skin cancer), staying away from obesity,
having enough exercise. He finished his speech by reminding
us that the bad habit of eating colorful food, carbohyrade,
all whites including white sugar, salt, milk, and having
no exercises were the mean reasons of the most diseases
in Turkey, and advised the guests to do lifting to make
bones stronger, stretching to keep flexability, and
doing physical activities.
Prof. Abdullah Uz TANSEL: It
(offshore outsourcing)
would accelerate gradually whether we desire or not.
In
an academic session Prof. Abdullah Uz Tansel informed
us about Offshore IT Outsourcing in the afternoon session.
After defining the words "sourcing", "outsourcing"
and "offshore outsourcing", he focused on
outsourcing and
offshore outsourcing, in which companies transfering
their money, product, or Business
process to abroad so they could cut the labor cost from
20% to 70%. He said that the U.S. offshored one tenth
of technology to other nations like India,
China and Romania, and lowered the costs of the IT (Information
Technology)
jobs. He mentioned that Dr. Klein, an economist, studied
IT offshoring and focused on the positive outcomes of
it for the U.S. based companies. He said that its effects
on immigration visas like H1 and M1 to the U.S. were
positive and solved some of the important economical
issues related to foreign employees brought by American
companies. He finished his speech with a last sentence
of the favor of offshore outsourcing: it would accelerate
gradually whether we desire or not. His speech was basically
on the favor of offshoreoutsourcing, which caused the
unemployment of millions of American citizens.
Alaaddin
YÜKSEL: The gap between the rich and the poor,
prejudice and intolerance over each other of countries
or nations were as dangerous and harmful as terrorism
in the world.
In
this panel, the most optimistic-looking person was the
Governor of Antalya, Alaaddin Yuksel. In his speech
that he made in Turkish, he mentioned about globalism,
citizenship and sovereignty of nations, which he considered
as today's world issues. He said that the gap between
the rich and the poor, prejudice and intolerance over
each other of countries or nations were as dangerous
and harmful as terrorism in the world.
So
according to him, the solution of these problems was
to step forward sincerely using the opportunities of
globalizm. He quoted Einstein's words "It is
much easier to break the atom into pieces than break
the prejudice of human being."
He said that the steps of the "Peace
Culture" were wisdom, action and
Finally culture, and the most sincere country in the
world was Turkey, following
the ideals of Ataturk saying "Peace at home,
peace on earth." and making "peace
culture" its general foreign policy, responding
the needs of twenty-first century. The Governor of Alanya
also said that Turkey's realism and ability to
cooperate
with Western world help it achieve an example development
level and find
its future in the direction of its own choice and the
realities of world, while
the warrior nation of Central Asia was becoming a leader
of civilization.
He
emphasized the importance of global cooperation and
the realistic policies
to make this world a better one, underlined that the
goal for the prosperous
and happy world was the one with the strongest economy
and ultra-modern weapons, but it must be a world of
cooperative people and common ideas. He also invited
all the participants and guests of the panel to Antalya
for a vacation saying "see Antalya, feel you live!"
Stephen
KINZER: The
new Turkish government with Erdogan gained energy to
continue the revolutionary ideology triggered and inspired
by the young and well educated politicians in 1990's
so for the first time...
We
also had a journalist in the panel.
Mr.
Stephen Kinzer, the columnist of New
York Times, with his vast knowledge about Turkey and
Middle East made
a very vital and impressive speech without making the
supporters of other opinions
on the political issues of Turkey offended. He mainly
focused on
the importance of the year 2004 for Turkish history
after briefly mentioning that
there were three big revolutions in the history of Modern
Turkey ; first
one was Atataturk's revolutions (from top to people),
second one was Prime Minister
Turgut Ozal's reforms (based on open market) with its
resistance; and the
third one was 1990's young generation of revolution
began establishing a philosophy,
understanding and fully recognizing Ataturk's ideology,
which could not work as enough as Ataturk desired. He
asked the question of what European Union would bring
to Turkey, and he responded it by himself: a new political
class consolidated and emerged, very different from
Adnan Menderes' era. He emphasized
the importance of Prime Minister Erdogan's coming to
the power
with an Islamic background (he defined it as a third
and the most significant
revolution) and that his government followed the most
Turkish population's
expectations to be a member of European Union. According
to Kinzer, Turkey should follow the EU's Copenhagen
criteria/ conditions, indeed what Ataturk's ideology,
and the mentality of Turkey was a big revolution itself
in the
Islamic world, and would be very successful and also
shown as an accounting
example to the Islamic countries.
He mostly underestimated the Ataturk's revolutions,
while giving a lot of credits to the Erdogan's council
of ministers' reforms in Turkey, which could make Turkey
accepted by European leaders and end the Islamic phobia
of the Western world. He said that Turkey, which had
a profound influence on the world, would become a leader
country with its universal values against the devout
Islam of the fundamentalist Islamic countries. Journalist
Kinzer also discussed what would happen if EU said "NO"
to Turkey, and his response was that Islamic countries'
ideologies would come over to European / Western doctrine.
His perspective about the revolution history and development
of Turkey was unique because he was thinking that Ataturk's
revolutions were not so effective and democratic that
it did not come from the people but from the top, Ataturk.
He ended his speech with his argument that the new Turkish
government with Erdogan gained energy to continue the
revolutionary ideology triggered and inspired by the
young and well educated politicians in 1990's so for
the first time, pressure on press, the guru of old politicians
and the separatist ideologies like leftist and rightist
were over the obstacles to be a democratic country did
not exist any more and very real possibility to become
a true model for the world, indeed, what Ataturk wished
Turkey to be.
Prof.
Dr. Richard BULLIET: Turkey became very important
for the U.S. after rejecting to invade Iraq by the democratic
and critical decision of the Grand Turkish National
Assembly and showing the real power to put Turkey in
a forward position..
Prof.
Dr. Richard Bulliet, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies
in Columbia University, started his speech by mentioning
about the newly started study about Turkey many years
later. After he explained the chronological history
of Turkish studies in the universities in the U.S.,
he emphasized that the ignorance about Turkey made such
a program very important and also inevitable. He said
that Turkey was academically very central point in the
U.S. during the period of time between 1950 and early
1970's, and then it disappeared in the academic world
after the second of 1970's to 1980's. He added that
in Turkey was not in academic curriculum and there were
no studies on Turkey although it was on the way to EU
membership. After early 1970's, they placed Turkey in
Middle East and when they study Middle East, they did
not pay attention to Turkey, they did not want to lean
Turkish, but other languages, so the number of the books
was very limited in the U.S. He continued that this negative fact about study of Turkey
was changing but the interest in Turkish History still
remained the same as before until September 11 tragic
event although the universities' studies
about
Ottoman Empire's History triple or quadruple times increased. He said that "September 11"
changed many things including the interest of the current
generation and the traditional look to Islamic world
in the U.S., turning towards to Turkey nowadays.
He strongly emphasized that Turkey became very
important for the U.S. after rejecting to invade Iraq
by the democratic and critical decision of the Grand
Turkish National Assembly and showing the real power
to put Turkey in a forward position. At the end of his
speech, he said that Turkey deserved to be a good friend
to be respected and more than economical and political
one, and needed to be a dynamic vision in the eyes of
the U.S. and needed to become vital in economical development
because the U.S. needs Turkey and wants it as a part
of American consciousness, and as a result,
the U.S. should consult with Turkey in many important
issues in the region.
*
* *
At
the end of the panel, Dr. Harold J. Raveche and Dr.
Yusuf Ziya Irbec made their short speeches and the three-day
confence was over. But many questions were still looking
for their answers. Maybe some day
some people will
answer, but it seems to be too soon for Turkey to see
what is really going on in this invisible humble conference
- while all are enjoying the trip to the U.S.
_
. _
Presentations from the conference on the Light Millennium:
Prof. Dr. Ekmeleddin
IHSANOGLU
Stephen KINZER
Prof. Dr. Nevzat YALCINTAS
Aysegul DURAKOGLU
E-mail to Alp ICOZ: ALPPOET@aol.com
--- The Major Turkish - American Relationships Conference
at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, http://www.stevens.edu/main/home;
between May 12 - 14, 2004 was
jointly organized with
Beykent University, Istanbul; http://www.beykent.edu.tr
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