Queens Chronicle
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Spring Guide, Page:26

Light Millennium E-Magazine Convenes A Global Community

by Keach HAGEY
Queens Chronicle Reporter

From her home office in Richmond Hill, Bircan Unver, founder and editor of the quarterly e-magazine Light Millennium, tackles the big questions: Why can't we feed everyone when there is more than enough food to go around? Why has the world's wealth been distributed so unevenly for so long? And if everyone knows about these problems and still can't stop them, then why are we here?

Her curiosity draws sympathizers from around the globe, who contribute essays, interviews, poems and photographs to the Internet publication.

Founded in 1999 and incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2001, the entirely volunteer-run site receives an average of 15,000 hits a day. "The original idea was to give people a chance to express themselves, to make people write, to make people think, to make them connect with each other," Unver said.

The Internet has proved an invaluable tool for creating this connection, linking a core audience of Turks and Turkish-Americans to a global community of thinkers interested in peace, dialogue and international cooperation. Her contributors include a book editor living in Australia, a Buddhist businessman living in England, a poetess living in Seattle, a New York photographer and Stephen Kinzer, the first Istanbul bureau chief of the New York Times, now living in Chicago.

"What is especially interesting is that she publishes articles by people with great experience and provocative points of view," Kinzer said. "Many private Web sites and blogs are filled with one person's ramblings. Light Millennium is the opposite of that. It's an increasingly sophisticated online magazine that provides insights that people won't find in many other places."

But Unver did not originally set out to make the Web her medium. The Turkish native moved to New York in 1990 to pursue a career in television production, after working as a freelance art journalist in Turkey for many years.

She took training courses at Queens Public Television, assisted a Turkish television producer and eventually began producing her own programs on art, culture and politics.

"At the beginning, I really thought that, if I learn this, that's going to help me get a job, either here or in Turkey," she said.

But on her 40th birthday, just after completing a master's degree in media studies at the New School in May of 1999, she got a spark of inspiration and wrote a manifesto.

"I cannot stand this century most of the time and find the solution of thinking that I belong to a further century," she wrote, in a document that became the foundation of the Third Millennium project, later renamed Light Millennium. "So let's ignore the natural lifespan and continue our projects like we could live a thousand years."

She took some HTML classes that summer, sent out an open invitation for contributions and published the first issue in August, in both Turkish and English.

Subsequent issues have focused on topics ranging from global hunger and nuclear war to science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and Turkish-Greek relations.

This last topic is of particular interest to Unver, whose early memories of the media's manipulation of the ancient rivalry between Turkey and Greece provided her first lessons in media studies.

"Since my childhood, whenever the government had a problem, it always came up with the danger that the Greeks will have war with us. This was the government's agenda, but it has never really been the people's. Over the years, politics and media shape people's minds, and they shape people's lives," she said.

Light Millennium is her attempt to fight fire with fire. Her submission guidelines are wide open, with the exception of "materials that promote partisan politics, war, the production of nuclear weapons" or discriminatory statements. One aspect of the Web site, www.turkishgreeksynergy.net, provides a platform for thinkers to weigh in on ways to improve Greek-Turkish relations.

Beginning in 2000, such positive messages also began to be incorporated in official statements of the Turkish government which led by Former Foreign Minister Ismail Cem who received Statesmen Awards of the Year among Former Greek Foreign Minister, also current President of PASOK, George Papandreou which was given by the East & West Institute in New York City on May 2, 2000.

On January 26, 2004 of this year, accepting an honorary doctorate from St. John's University, Prime Minister Tayyip Ergogan who also conveys this approach further, stated: "¯If we cannot get along with our neighbor, we cannot have peace in the world."

But Unver knows that victory will not be won with good words alone. Like any good New School McLuhanite, she has made sure that her revolution is as much of the medium as the message.

She learned while writing for prominent Turkish newspapers and magazines -including Sanathaber, dPaper and Euroturks.com- that the mainstream media's dependence on advertising can often seriously compromise its content. As a result, Light Millennium is commercial-free.

"Advertisement shouldn't be allowed to remove any ideas. That's why I founded it as a non-profit," she said.

This stance means Unver has her work cut out for her. Budget limitations ended the publication's ability to translate articles several years ago, and its inability to pay for a salaried grant writer has hindered fundraising efforts for the moment.

Still, the organization has a committed board of eight members and an ever-growing network of supporters.

Photographer Julie Mardin contributes articles, photographs, design and editing, and has been a board member for several years. "It's about contributing toward a peaceful future, and helping people find their voice," she said.

Figen Bingül, a Turkish translator from Hartsdale, found the Web site last year and has become the organization's secretary. "I really like that people can express what they feel clearly there," she said.

Their goal is to publish the e-magazine monthly in as many as five different languages, and to continue the Light Millennium TV series, workshops and events.

In the meantime, the spring issue of Light Millennium, "Children of the World," and its corresponding youth poetry project, "When Peace Comes," will come out on April 23rd. For more information, visit www.lightmillennium.org.

© Keach HAGE, Queens Chronicle, Thursday, March 25, 2004, Spring Guide; Queens, New York.