I will be speaking as an outsider myself, being a non-European.
I'm actually a native outsider because I'm at home nowhere and maybe everywhere.
And also, I'm trained as an outsider since I was trained in.
So I'm saying that because there were many issues about the use of the word green.
And when I say we, I mean it as we Europeans in the wider sense than usual.
In a sense, we're outsiders to Europe through cherish, a dramatic, historic academic attachment to Europe without being native.
Europeans are included in another Europe, which is modular, so outsiders inside is the word that is not pronounced as the one in the middle.
The border between both. And so this is this is what I would like to engage with.
I'm going to talk about the question of refugees in Europe.
It's a very minor issue if you consider the number of displaced people who have reached Europe as compared to the number of other things,
other places. Turkey, for instance. But this issue has taken enormous proportions in political discourse.
And I speak today,
as we saw in Chatham House review the way you feel about the admittance of refugees in Europe really determines your attachment to the European Union,
which is very strange.
The populist movements that extremist movements and we've been talking about have placed the question of foreign migrants in the very
centre of their discourse as the ultimate proof of the competence of the union to protect Europeans against whatever they fear.
So what really happened in the 10 years that I've been working with refugees is that it seems that the refugee
crisis has revealed in a war that we did not suspect in Europe a clear divide between one Europe and the other.
France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and all these countries have taken in a significant number of refugees to Greece.
The country's recently freed from communism, for instance, have not.
And so it appears quite clearly that the quest for political unity in Europe based on international treaties,
administrative decrees and so on has not erased something which was the diversity of national memories.
And we can shame and blame as much as we want.
It seems so natural that repeat the countries that have seen the cultural identities
crushed not so long ago or still commemorate their sufferings under the Ottoman Empire,
for instance, will not applaud the arrival of nine Europeans non-Christian outsiders the same way than others who have,
for instance, a colonial experience or other experience of having been themselves refugees.
And I think the diversity of national memories has faith as a slice of growth and the shaping of national policies toward refugees.
So this is one flaw in the borders that the crisis has revealed that these outsiders have so on to us.
The other the borders that that the refugee crisis has revealed and the also wanted to put under
the rug people very happy Europeans living together on the inner borders within member states,
the border, the economic, yes, just economic inequity.
They have also revealed that the outer borders of Europe are very difficult to define,
as I think they think it might be minute where all the physical border.
You know, they're on the border. We also used to cross the trade and the visas cross, and they would take me eight or nine cross to protect Europe.
So it is very difficult to define, let alone, six.
Right. So these are all, you know, different borders that have taken with me with the arrival of refugees.
Now the question is why do they come to Europe when it's really quite simple?
I read in the paper, but Professor doesn't have the six strands of freedom, justice, prosperity, solidarity, diversity.
I'm missing one. Well, that's why they can't.
Europe is very attractive. And they believe that in a way they are working very hard and making a narrative, but these people have got it right.
And this is probably not the way they would say that.
Why are you coming to Europe because of oppression, inequity, poverty, discrimination?
I mean, the shadow image of the forgotten ashes.
A description. So this brings us to the paradox.
Europe is a success. Look at all these people coming because what we have and this success makes the Europeans feel extremely vulnerable.
So. Now, I need to say a few words on my own experience.
I found an association thing in the World Association. It's a tiny little thing, but it wasn't.
It was created in 2008 and still going on.
And it was it has become we didn't think so when we started.
But it has become a very original thing and trials.
It was very original because the public in France and the French have had shifts of attitude towards the refugees.
It started with in 2008, with the Afghans coming into the Afghan war astonishment.
You know, Europe and France was not for this, for this number and this type of refugees.
It was a very new thing. France and many European countries had kept an idea of refugees the way the convention the Geneva Convention describes them,
and this description does not fit. But nothing has been done about that, and it will be quite easy to, you know, think when this happened.
That's of the convention does not apply if we can agree to a different sort of refugees.
And we didn't do that.
And then for a few years, governments and associations that everyone just panics around trying to help those people who feed those people and so on.
And it was a horrendous time because being unprepared there was no lodging and no housing and no care, and the process was very long.
It was really terrible. And. So grew up feeling folks emotions a lot after astonishment, I would say pity, shame.
Anger and fear on both sides. Anger of the wealthy and people against the government are not doing enough.
And anger against those people coming and sort of shaming us living on the streets and so on.
Very, very ambivalent and mixed feelings towards the refugees.
I think a one year, which is for me, the iconic year of next year.
It is the year 2015, in January, on 7th of January.
We have the killings of Charlie Hebdo.
And not only the satirical journal How Do Do the French job, but also murder in a Jewish supermarket and murders of policemen?
And it comes, these deaths come as a very big shock to the French people.
Of a divide inside the country. Later the same year, in September, we have the death of one child, Aylan Kurdi,
and the image of this child dead on the beach like some sort of fallen angel is the counterpart of the shock of Australia too.
And I would say, I keep this as.
The idea of mixed feelings and also confused feelings because refugees had nothing to do with the killing or something you thought.
But Islamic terror it. And so the unspeakable, politically incorrect mix up the between refugees and Muslim terrorists because it's unspoken,
has created very confused feelings.
And that's what seems to be what we decided to do was to take this question very seriously, meaning, oh sorry, I think we have to be very, very fast.
Yeah. All right. So part of that was I was really very on that, first of all, to consider that these outsiders coming to Europe were extreme European,
their extreme European, because they've walked around Europe for months and ages.
And they have they have full comparative studies of different and different European countries.
They have cousins all over the place. And something more, I would say they have a sort of existential Panopto that is deeply European.
They have wished to reinvent their lives. And that makes them heroes of of, of, of all time.
So they are to be Europeans, and this is the way they they see themselves.
And on the other hand, they are not at all European, and it's the disillusion, both on both sides.
This is very interesting.
They come to Europe as a land of opportunity and a future which would make Timothy Snyder very happy and they discover coming there.
Not that it is not a land of opportunity and ends and future,
but that it is a land of obligation and constraints and rules and laws, and they do not respect that at all.
And so we have to turn the narrative over, you know, it's that there are lots of rules and also they carry with them.
They are just. I'm sorry, I'm being so wrong non-European things that we didn't want to see.
You see, they come from very damaged contexts, corruption, violence, discrimination, inequity, and they carry on victims of that.
They they think of themselves as victims, but they carry it with them.
And it's and we cannot not see that. And so what happens if you are clever and which is very interesting is that the
interaction between the French society and I'm going to have the red card here at the
end of the refugees is that both sides come to understand how the integration of
outsiders is a transformative experience on both sides that we need to make friends.
That means no one another. And be ourselves on both sides, be ourselves on both sides with no fascination at all.
But there are rules for that. And as far as I'm concerned in Europe, the rules are European rules.
Thank you. I feel privileged to be here with you and also today,
not just because there is one chance for an individual to get to university and be in a position to speak in front of a distinguished audience,
but also because our minorities today, I think, are facing great exclusion, discrimination, stereotyping, white family romance.
People from and travellers in the UK face discrimination, but leave here in Europe for around 800 years.
We are living on all European member states, speaking one language that differs in each member state.
So how much the European history the various nationalities talk about the historical brown, how much it is part of the overall minority?
I got this question yesterday. Listening to the colleague's presentation.
I ask myself the House of the European history, do we have a minorities have?
So the Romani groups, as they are discriminated against so much on a national level, they very much share a European identity.
If I can say so, we are glued together as European countries, chihuahua minorities,
children as well to the culture of music through the cultural traditions and those minorities who folks tradition alive,
especially with the grohmann groups are the ones to embrace European identity.
But we still leave as outsiders. This is a huge discrepancy.
If I tell you that some of our communities in Romania, for example, 200 years ago, were slaves.
Is it something familiar? Sounds familiar to you?
Or if I say that some of our communities suffered during the Holocaust and we lost around half a million people?
These are important points of European history. It should be told, I think, in the mainstream.
And the truth is that the European taxpayers are not really featuring those important information about the history of our people.
As I said, the narrative of many groups in each country because I have the chance when I was making films to visit,
I'm 27 27 member states of the European Union and dig deep and visit local communities and see what is their level of integration,
how is their housing condition, how much they ActionScript promise.
What I found is that there are huge differences and our concerns are we don't
have the projects as our agendas because they actually have different values,
different food, they have different customs.
But still, what connects us together that we've been through the centuries of exclusion that we face.
So if you see a role, any child who gets to university,
it's such a rare thing that it's still somehow you see, it's a great challenge, as I see for you.
It's one of the greatest challenge to integrate those communities who are really on the periphery of society.
I was thinking about Europe that could potentially embrace all of the various cultures, and they have the opportunity.
And I hope that the new construct of Europe, if we may save the constructing Europe.
So to see will include those regional and periphery of voices, and we will be able to embrace that narrative as so.
I'm speaking about narratives. And also,
I'm telling you that the globalisation that the the freedom of movement and information technology allow this certain
closeness between these isolated from many communities and also brought some of the problems of the east to the West.
So it's more visible to you can see on the streets. And it's hard to imagine that there are some member states in the East where the living conditions
are so bad for our communities that even living on the streets of Paris alone is a good opportunity.
So there are great social discrepancies.
We have this division between the east and West.
Still, I'm someone who is coming from the East,
and I did experience the pull as part of the accession policies where Western countries would give straightforward
reports and feedback to member states in relation how they should improve the condition of the minorities.
Now, once accession happened, those issues were lost.
And it's it's obvious that now today, when Iran 10 15 years passed, these Panopto and racist policies strengthened.
We are in the worst position to start to think about the problem that happened with the accession years.
I wanted to show you a short term, which is which extreme, and not just to wake you up as part of the money,
but to try to explain to you what this European minority identity complex means
for us world that you seek that there is actually more that links us together,
no matter national borders than what divides us.
Reflecting on Timothy Garton Ash, I'll start you off.
We need a new story in you that we presenting the unique uniforms that we have for you freedom, peace, love, prosperity, diversity and solidarity.
I will change you action. I think we need diversity, solidarity and prosperity as well as we know we need law.
Peace and freedom. But this European idea, the creation of a new identity,
so to say that could fool the younger generation together could show new ideas
to them is something that needs to be embraced residual patriarchal interest.
And I think that's what needs to be have their agenda. And I think that the emancipatory practises,
what happened with the role of women in the past 100 years needs to be showcasing for us if it's possible and we write policy.
Checks and balances. Monitoring the situation overall might be prudent in this country.
Thank you very much. Hello again.
And actually, this whole thing about Turkey being inside and outside, it's a little confusing for all of us really for all these years.
In fact, you know, more than 50 years now, we don't know where Turkey is.
I'd like to use the expression turkey at the margins of Europe. That's what it's been for all these years.
And of course, if you are from Istanbul and I, for instance,
work on the European side of the Bosphorus Bridge and I look I live on the European side of the Bosphorus Bridge,
but work my cactuses on the Asian side. So I communicate with Asia and Europe back and forth every day.
So the conclusion is that it's there as an everyday thing.
But let me say also one thing when I arrived in Oxford in 2005 for the first time,
actually at the office of the fellow from Turkey was actually at the Middle East Studies Centre,
but said the next time I arrived, it was moved to the European Studies Centre.
So that's the kind of thing that's so I actually wanted to begin with this quote by French writer.
This was actually an expression that was uttered in nineteen thirty three.
I also saw a reference to the conference. It was October 1943 after the Reichstag flyer.
I mean, when things actually really look pretty gloomy and I thought, you know,
this is relevant code in terms of also the context that we find ourselves in today.
So we see a similar kind of discouragement that was expressed in nineteen thirty three.
But you know, in what stories does Europe tell?
And do I like to think that I'm basically giving a story, you know, seen from Turkey?
Or, you know, looking at the Europeans stories from Turkey, you know, how do they look when you view them from Turkey?
And of course, I didn't want to focus on the institutional relationship between Turkey and the European Union because,
you know, we always see that there. There's so much published on that.
I wanted to go beyond that. So I wanted to start, you know, by a novel after the 1985 novel by Orhan Pamuk, it's called the White Castle.
It was published in 1985, and this would be translated to English in ninety eight.
And this is the cover of the first, you know, the Turkish version basically meaning White Castle.
And in this book, Orhan Pamuk tells the story of an Italian scholar captured by the Turkish fleet while sailing on a ship from Naples.
This in 17th century brought in a prison in Constantinople.
The Italian scholar presents himself as a doctor to his captors and after healing a number of people on the basis of common sense knowledge,
he gains the admiration of Pasha, who gets him as a slave to one of his friends name torture, meaning master and hoja and the Italian scholar.
They actually look like twin brothers.
In fact, so much so that the Italian scholars during their first encounter, he almost feels like looking into a mirror.
And over the years, they develop a relationship through long conversations around the question that the Hajjah consistently poses.
And the question is Why am I what I have?
You know? And you know,
they delve into endless conversations around this question looking at each other by the end of their more than a decade long mutual opposites,
coupled with sharing stories, their identities are displaced and who is who becomes blurred.
The relationship between the Italian scholar and his master hoja, their exchanges, physical,
cosmetic similarities coupled by significant differences of character and worldview.
The master slavery, as reflected in Pamuk's dazzling prose, I think mimics the story of Turkey's relations with Europe.
I think. That there are. Three fateful periods in Republican Turkey's relations with Europe, the interwar period, the years of labour migration,
and I'd like to pinpoint it as the post 2004, the decline and encyclopaedias decline of Turkey and Europe.
These are not conclusive, of course, but I see them as essential in telling the stories of Europe seen from Turkey, not Europe data war years.
There were two proposals by two political figures for a European Union.
You know they're up there. And although of course, not present in the initial two proposals, Turkey was later included in that.
And I find that important because these years really represent a change in the mutual gazes of the Turkish and the European leaders.
And I see actually some kind of a, you know, leadership that you know that we want to emphasise today in thinking about the story of Europe.
The long held belief about in cults that bloodthirsty Turk was actually changed Europe during this time through the observation of the will and the,
you know, the secularism reforms of Turkey's Republican elite in the 1920s.
So a lesson maybe to learn from this day. I mean, I try to look at these three errors and try to learn from them.
And maybe the lesson to learn from this error in telling the story of Europe seeing from Turkey
is that it is important to remember the kind of leadership that existed during into war years.
And I believe, of course, in spite of everything that Snyder said, and he kind of shook me off, you know, in a major way yesterday.
So it's at the back of my mind.
But I believe what distinguished the vision of the leaders at that time was their vivid memories of the First World War and that
they were guided with a desire to prevent another war and accordingly were open to reconsider prior inclinations and decisions.
So I, you know, I like the idea of leaders looking at each other, observing each other and changing their minds.
And this is what happened actually during the war years from the second era, the guesswork was phenomenal.
Of course,
labour migration that led to the guest worker phenomenon began through a bilateral agreement between Turkey and Germany in nineteen sixty one,
followed by similar agreements with other countries, eventually leading to the settlement of about five million migrants of Turkish origin in Europe.
While guest workers were criticised by the governments for failing to culturally integrate into European societies,
their integration was paradoxically made more difficult by government policies that continue to see them as temporary.
And I call this the dilemma of impossibility, right?
No matter how much they desired and tried to integrate, all the guest workers face the wall of impossibility.
And actually, one scholar at the end of the labour migration period said that, you know,
Turkey was as opposed to the more widely claims view Turkey being in the waiting room of the European House.
He said, You know, Turkey has actually been in the servant's quarter of the European House.
Yet, you know, similar to what servants quarters can do in many aristocratic households,
the labour migration phenomenon ignited the fire of real encounters between Turkish Muslim immigrants and citizens of Europe,
and this was an encounter that changed the landscape in Europe, diversifying its, you know, new genres of music and cinema and arts.
You know, you see all of that.
My colleague Neda Fact, you're my dear friend and colleague describes the emerging, interwoven identities through the metaphor of carpets.
You know you have a headache, beautiful carpet there.
And Calypso has been, of course, using the expression threads all along with multiple interlaced colours and stories.
So I'm not using this normative. This is the story of Europe, the carpet.
This story, if you will. And it's a better story, I think, than a collage.
You know, the different identities side by side.
These are intervallo interlaced, really? Stuff needs to be underlined, the third period is the decline period, and I'm getting there.
It's my loss and this is, you know, I see I mean, everyone asks whether the decline begins and I see it, as you know,
2004 with the Annan plan, the failure of the Annan plan with the referendum, you know, Turkish Cypriots vote yes.
The Greek Cypriots said no, indicating its failure. So after that, basically, you know, then you see all the expressions of train crash.
Although the negotiations began a year later, you know, they actually stopped.
They were suspended. And I had that broken heart there because everyone, including the Liberals, ended up having a broken heart at the time.
And you know, I think that one of the important years is 2016 was Brexit.
And then of course, there's a coup attempt in Turkey, and that's where we see the decline.
Freedom House declared Turkey as a not free country in 2018 and interesting in 2019.
Hungary was declared party free by freedom, so that goes to indicate the decline that we're facing.
So these are two stories.
I mean, there's on the one hand, the negative stories, the level of impossibility and nativism, you know, in opposition, of course, to the carpet.
And then on the other side, there's, you know, good political leadership, the carpet.
And then I call this the mantle of the law because there's one good example that I want to undo the underlying and then I'll finish with that.
Today's you, the new authoritarian regime. So what distinguishes them really is and we have this in Turkey.
I mean, very different. But in Hungary, we see this.
They actually used the Constitution. Well, you know, the expression for this is autocratic legalism.
They use the constitution in consolidating, you know, authoritarianism.
And so, you know, in one place, there's resistance actually against this.
And that's cool. And that's a good story that I'd like to underline that that we see in parliament.
If you want to end up with a good note that, you know, if you want to underline that, but basically,
let me basically say that the task facing Europe is really not a utopian identity like the early republic elite did,
you know, because there wasn't already the Turkish nation identity sharing?
My dad says, you know, the Republican elites took this empty balloon to call the Turkish nation and they greeted like victory, right?
I mean, we don't have to do that in Europe because there is a legacy, really.
You know, it just needs to be reclaimed. So it's not a utopian thing.
But you know, what is needed is really maybe to recognise the many legacies,
triumphs and moments of leadership interwoven identities that are lost one another,
like the Italian scholar, project, Italian scholar and Hoja or Phonebooks White Castle.
Thank.