WE WERE IN RHODES

Jan 19, 2011 by admin    No Comments    Posted under: Meetings

Rhodes Meeting October 21-24, 1999- Press Release

For two years now, women from Greece and Turkey, members of WINPEACE, have worked hand and in hand to ease tensions between our countries and to build a culture of peace. Immediately following the 1997 crisis that brought our countries to the brink of war and long before the earthquakes, we women decided that enough was enough.

We believed that the time had come to take active measures at making our world safer for our children. On the beauti­ful and historical island of Rhodes, this WINPEACE meeting came together in a radically changed atmosphere. The tragedies that caused immense grief for our people liberated the power of friendship between them and acted as a catalyst of solidarity. The two earthquakes gave evidence that political inflexibility leads to a dead end and the strong need is to overcome engrained prejudices

WINPEACE has accomplished quite a bit over the years. It is now gaining recognition by both national governments and support from international institutions. WINPEACE projects-joint ventures (book translations, conflict resolution seminars, agro-tourism, small and medium enterprises, youth camps and documentaries) are now getting moral and material support from international institutions.

WINPEACE appeals to the governments of Turkey and Greece to take concrete measures, such as, reducing military expenditures by 5% by the year 2003, which is consistent with the Beijing Platform for Women and as WINPEACE pro­posed in May 1998. Actions such as this, along with Turkey’s candidacy in the EU, will contribute to preserve the existing atmosphere of friendship and mutual understanding. Finally, WINPEACE asks the governments to desist from the use or threat to use military force as an option in the resolution of conflicts.

Civic society cannot allow this new window of opportunity to close.

After two years of collaboration and walking side by side, women from Greece and Turkey, the members of WINPEACE, send from Rhodes a message of good neighboring, peace and prosperity in the region and its communities. In the midst of grief from the earthquake catastrophe, the peoples of Greece and Turkey have liberated the power of friend­ship, solidarity and support. The fear of the awesome natural phenomena showed the dead-end of political inflexibility, put aside the sting of prejudice, and favored the effusion of a climate of trust. The citizens’ needs showed the path, the political practice should follow. It is within this path we should remain with stability, devotion and determination. This happens because the relationships between the countries are not only defined by their governments, but by their communities as well. In addition, this imposed by our duty to the earthquake victims, to the contemporary percep­tions of democracy and to the fact that the consciousness of multicultural societies is developed within conditions of globalization.

We, the women of WINPEACE, declare today that we stand for and will continue to stand for the advancement of this effort – firstly because we are women and therefore have been used to living a great extent away from power, have learned to dare to make the changes, to build durable relations, to tell our thoughts clearly, to act methodically and co-ordinate our actions so that tomorrow could dawn today.

Aware of the messages of our times, we declare our support to the promotion of the values of peace and the prosper­ity of the region. We say yes to the proposal for the reduction of military expenditure, to the proposal of the nuclear-free zone in south-east Europe, to the dialogue between the governments of Greece and Turkey, to the upgrading of the UN role, to the revision of the view which has been keeping Turkey out of the European family. We also ask to award –with the Nobel Prize for Peace – the selflessness of the rescue teams AKUT and EKAM who devotedly offered their services to both countries under difficult, crucial and critical circumstances.

Under the dust of the ruins, we, the citizens, have opened a new path in the relations between our two countries. We, as women, will help to establish this road, to widen it and to support it. This is our responsibility and we will do it with

great devotion

Women MP’s from Turkey and Greece join hands – Ankara Decleration May 2000

called “Memorandum of Understanding”:

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