LOVE & HATE
Posted under: 1997 was a wild year! That was the year we had founded KADER and concurrently Anakültür and, I was running from one meeting to the next in Bodrum, İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Konya and Southeastern Anatolia. In between, I often gave myself a break by escaping to my house in Torba located on the Aegean coast. It was during one of those breaks towards the end of May one morning Zeynep (Oral) phoned: “Margarita Papandreou has phoned. She has asked what we as women are doing while the youth, businessmen and even the soldiers of the two nations are cooperating. I have asked here & there and no one showed any interest. I’ve decided you and I and Meryem Koray from the Aegean Women’s Solidarity Foundation should start an initiative on behalf of Turkey,” she said. Without any hesitation I said “Well thought out! Go ahead and include Anakültür also and make any statement you wish.” After all, we have had founded Anakültür together too.
After much correspondence and meetings with heated discussions on this side of the Aegean, the time had come for the first bilateral meeting with the women on the other side of the Aegean and I found myself with Şirin (Tekeli) and Nilüfer (Kuyaş) in Athens. I have been to many international meetings before but this was going to be the first “bilateral” one and I was to meet the legendary Margarita Papandreou and the meeting was going to take place at the historical place “Kastri” in which Margarita was living. All of this was a dimension beyond excitement for me: We were in Athens to open a new page at the history of Greek & Turkish relations.
Between November 28-29th, 1997, for two days & nights, we talked, discussed, laughed, got stressed, embraced, shared our fears, hesitations, reservations and dreams thus we’ve met! During this period I come across a one sided reality which never could have occurred to me nor could I have ever imagined. While searching for a name for our initiative, I suggested the “Aegean Woman’s Peace Initiative” to which there was a strong resistance: According to the Greeks, the Aegean was Greek and the use of the word ‘Aegean’ even for a peaceful cause would be the end of the beginning of our initiative! The women at the table were sincerely trying to explain that, it was the commonly accepted, mainstream notion by the people on the street. I was amazed! I was trying to understand how they could believe that the Aegean was Greek only!? I became apprehensive. The issue was still unresolved when Margarita said “when I told my driver to pick up the Turkish women from the hotel he frankly told me of his mixed feelings and how disturbed he felt” I began to realize how powerful hatred could become and how tough our mission was going to be. While biased knowledge is turning into prejudice, pride and fear captivates the present and the future by scattering renewed and rejuvenated seeds of hatred. In return we had to sow the seeds of love against this culture of hatred, urgently!
Finally we named our initiative named WINPEACE. WINPeace has once more made me realize how thin the line is between hate & love and how easily the former could become a weapon of violence and even mass destruction. Thus, we all need to protect and nourish love for the sake of peace with passion.
After ten years; although we could not become the wide spread grassroots movement reaching all strata of both societies I dreamt of, the movement is still standing. I am still enjoying the embracing power of love and I am proud that I have lived the experience of turning a culture of hatred into culture of peace. I know that with tens of WINPEACE women I miss, we will continue to be the guardians of peace of our Aegean on both sides: Now everyday from where I sit, I smile across to the care freely stretching Island of Kos where we held our first public meeting in May 1998. I wink and send my gratitude to the goddess of love, Aphrodite of Knidos, at the tip of the majestic peninsula of Datça which is extending into Aegean caressing Kos, with love.
Ceylan Orhun