Global problems, global solutions

ISTANBUL

Akkan Suver, the president of Marmara Group Foundation that organizes the Eurasian Economic Summit, addressed the attendees April 6 in his opening speech. 

Please find below a summary of his addressing: 

Eurasian Economic Summits have now become a tradition. This tradition symbolizes the value we have been attached to as a non-governmental organization in the international arena.

Considering that the era we live in is the era of civil thought as much as the era of information, the high level of participations in the organisations carried out by the Marmara Group Foundation underline the significance of a civil thought and convincement. In aware of this responsibility, the Marmara Group Foundation has been advocating peace for many years in the international arena. 

Our generation was delighted for the fact that the Cold War came to an end. Though we came to have witnessed the incidents in 2015 which we could not imagine even during the times of Cold War; these kinds of events, unfortunately, still go on. We have not only witnessed but also gone through ineffable sorrows related to them. These pains we are exposed to have transgressed our boundaries. 

Now, we are out of conscientious limits and humanly emotions. Paris assaults occurred in an incomprehensible cruelty, insane suicide-bombings taking place in Ankara, Istanbul, and in Brussels. The brutalities of DAESH, massacres that turn Africa into hell, savage murdering acts conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the harassing politics of Armenia.  

Terror has caused incurable wounds on humanity and it still does. 

In the meantime, millions of people striving to reach Europe through the gaps of our borders have been waiting for the day on which they are supposed to set off for a maritime travel or searching for a spot at the border gate to run away from mainland. Humanity is on the verge of a turning point. For our future days, we have to overcome these turbulent times. We are not able to turn a blind eye to the incidents in our surroundings while Syria, a failed-state, is struggling for its existence, Iraq is anchored in instability, and Iran is acting indecisively and an Armenia is conducting mischievously. 

Since prudence is left behind the senses, emotions replace the reality; great grief and sorrow turn into pleasure and people cannot help themselves from considering that they are always righteous. 

This approach makes us incomprehensible and irreconcilable and pushes to the entire loneliness. The output of this loneliness, May Allah protect us, shall lead to poverty, hardship and challenges. In this sense, that the global problems require global solutions must not be forgotten. 

Consequently, we ought to be more attentive and prudent. Then the challenges we have been faced with can only be overcome via sense of responsibility and dispassionateness. 

The humanity, today, is on the verge of creating, seeking and practising a system of civilization, generating new values, and new life forms together with their new spheres against the negative developments taking place on World.  

The people of today are in search of an alternative civilization with the thought of changing, progressing and advancing constantly to ensure peace, welfare and stability. From my point of view, the economic dimension of this new civilisation provides with prosperity, the cultural dimension with peace and social dimension with stability. 

Proceeding from this standpoint, the fields of strategic struggles should be replaced with the fields of social development and common fields in order for peace and stability to facilitate this umbrella of security and justice.

We attach, from this reason, great importance to the Silk Road Project introduced by China. The axis of it, in my opinion, will help create a new field of stability and shift the heart of the Global Economy into Asia. 

The painful incidents we have gone through today, terrorism, refugee issues and forced migration are the improper interpretation and misunderstanding of the term democracy.

The sustainability and maintenance of peace and stability are proportional to the democracy. Yet, democracy and freedoms cannot be established by means of formative legislations. The Human Development Index of every country is variable. Now that they are divergent; democracy and stability cannot be applied on Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq through the cut-copy-paste methods imposed by the others. 

The economic development, welfare and stability cannot be realised – on paper –by the enactment of countless of legislations far beyond the development level of the related society. No scientific proof has been introduced to support the hypothesis that democratic development has provided with the economic development. 

The 21st Climate Change Conference, the so called COP21 held in Paris in previous December was one of the most important events of the last years. The Treaty of Paris published at the end of the conference where thirty thousand people – among them ten thousand from civil societies – were officially registered and, that 195 countries having participated is another success story. Emerging in the wake of the collapse of the Copenhagen Summit in 2009 and the ineffectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol, the Treaty of Paris has become the most important deal of this year. Through this agreement, how great the threat we are faced with concerning the climate change has been declared with the most powerful arguments. 

The main duty of the states is to terminate the growth based on the increase of the fossil fuel use by 2018. In this context, the cancellation or prevention of all brand new coal-fired power plant licenses are also considered as a precaution until 2020 when the Treaty of Paris will come into force.