In this international CHE-salon we will shift our focus to the state of democracy in Turkey. Also in this country many tendences are visible that diminish the real functioning of democracy as we see it. We are glad to have Hamza Zeytinoglu as our guest in this salon. He is a critical thinker who wants to share his vision about what is now happening in Turkey. Moreover he will try to address the current situation in Turkey in all its complexity by an attempt to analyse the underlying local and global currents and dynamics that brought the country to where it is today, through the lenses of Spiral Dynamics Integral. That makes it more easy for you as a participant to transfer the experiences and lessons from Turkey to the place where you live.

Historically Turkey was defined as the Crossroads / Bridge between the East and West: Little America, a Muslim majority example of democracy, the Grand Turk, the Ottoman Empire, melting pot of civilizations. This year marks the centennial of the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. And, its literally at its own crossroads, or so to say ‘last exit’. What will be the future of democracy in this country? Elections are imminent. Since 2002 Erdogan and AKP has ruled Turkey, first as a ruling party, then since 2015 together with the Nationalist Movement Party. 2018 brought about a regime change where a Turkish style Presidency was introduced and the parliamentary system was disempowered and the country is literally under control by a strong man.

Our guest Dr. Hamza Zeytinoglu is a consultant and founder of Social-i Networks Ltd UK. His work is focussed on organizational culture and change management using SDI (Spiral Dynamics Integral), OBM (Optimum Balance Model) and training for values driven, digitally enhanced social platforms. He is a member of the Political, Economical and Social Studies Foundation of Turkey (TUSES) and advisor to the Mayor of Karsiyaka, Izmir.

Hamza writes: “The ruling ideology exerts security above liberty, tradition above self-expression and demands conformity and religious and patriotic unity. In recent decades, most everything has been privatized. The ruling party claims they uphold democracy, laicism and recently even started praising the founder Ataturk, and that they have unleashed the Anatolian Lions economically to foster a Local and National economy and claim leadership in the Muslim world.

The opposition on the other hand has a different story: they claim Erdogan is a dictator and has relentlessly robbed the country and funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars into their own coffers and sold off the country to Arabs, turned the country into an illegal drugs hub, meanwhile taken full control of the state by unjustifiable and illegal means.

In the last years the country had to deal with severe existential issues, regime change, COVID pandemic, multiple economic crises, on-going arrests of political dissidents, involvements in wars in Syria, Libya and the ongoing Kurdish problem, a 5 million+ refugee influx, and now the massive earthquake of February 2023 with an official death toll of 45,000 people, more than unaccounted 100,000 people and masses injured and displaced, cities and towns literally wiped out”.

The salon is online via ZOOM and will last ca 2 hours. It will consist of two blocks. One block with Hamza’s introduction and Q&A. In the second block we will dialogue on what we can learn from Turkey’s situation in breakout groups and close with a common sharing. Hamza will join us for the whole session. Language is English.

We hope to meet you!! Auke van Nimwegen, Hans Ruijs, Lars Lutje Schipholt and Leida Schuringa

SIGN UP

You are invited to join us in this CHE-Salon on April 3d. Sign up by clicking on the red Reserve a spot link. You will receive a confirmation from EventBrite. Friday March 31th you will get a ZOOM-link to join this CHE-salon.

See for more information about the Center for Human Emergence (CHE) in The Netherlands our website www.humanemergence.nl. You also can sign up for our mailing list there.