Civil Society Organizations Came Together in Meydan (Arena) to Talk about the ‘City’

Last month, YADA Foundation and Civil Pages gathered many different CSOs together in Diyarbakır to talk about sustainable cities, development, environmental problems and struggle against poverty.

Using different methods of communication, YADA held an effective workshop and has an aim of using and expanding new tools to increase dialogue among civil society organizations.

With the excitement and accumulation from the workshop in Diyarbakır, about 50 representatives from different CSOs in Turkey came together on June 20 in İstanbul, by the call of YADA and Civil Pages saying “Come to the Arena to talk about the cities which belong to all of us!”

Alev Erkilet, Ebru Ergün, Eda Beyazıt, Gizem Aksümer, İmge Akçakaya Waite, Mustafa Kömürcüoğlu and Yasemin Kırkağaçlıoğlu was invited to talk and open discussions about “the cities in which different people can live together.”

Coming together to put a new model of dialogue and negotiation among CSOs into practice, CSO representatives discussed about how the cities could “belong to all of us”, talked about the arguments on issues as city, urbanization, sustainability and what all these discussions means regarding the culture of living together.

Mehmet Ali Çalışkan, one of the founders of YADA Foundation, made the opening speech, explained the Foundation’s works and outcomes during the process. Upon the reasons of implementing “Meydan”, he said:

“YADA makes researches about how CSOs have an effect on citizens and public administrators; tries to explain their effect on politics, public opinions and decisions. Some basic results from our works are as follows: Citizens and public administrators in Turkey do not think CSOs have an effect on the decisions of the Parliament or on the public opinion. What is more, they do not think CSOs are democratic and transparent. On the other hand, citizens and public administrators in Turkey think that it is very important to have a civil society to discuss, discover and analyse current issues, define victims and talk about victimization. Meaning, they find the idea very precious but do not find the operating CSOs effective.

The main result is that civil society in Turkey has withdrawn into themselves. There are two sides to this. First, withdrawal into identities. Such as ethnicity, religious or geographical identity… Second, withdrawal into the subject. Such as environmental organizations’ talking only about environmental issues or women organizations’ talking only about problems regarding women…”

“This kind of withdrawals cause CSOs to socialize only with similar organizations and produce their own jargon. By this way, CSOs with common interests discuss within each other. Although one issue leads to another, it is not possible to create a culture of dialogue and negotiation due these withdrawals,” continued Çalışkan.

“‘Meydan’ arouse from the question “How could we overcome this introversion?” What we expect from these gatherings is to make Meydan a place for everyone to express themselves and hear what others explain.”

Alev Erkilet also summarized the current position of civil society and what is expected: “Civil-societism is basically about struggling for rights. However, today it is more about emphasizing and reinforcing cultural identities. CSOs gradually become a part of the discussion that goes like ‘my identity may be seen in public arena,too.’ A strong culture of solidarity already exists in Turkey, starting from ‘neighborhood culture’.”

One of the methods applied in the event was mind mapping. 3 different subjects (City, Accessibility, Involvement) was pinned on ‘Meydan’ and participants were given time to note down the associating concepts. By this way, CSO representatives from different backgrounds had a common map which could be seen by everyone there. Then, they were asked what would they change about the city if they had a magic wand. This activity made it possible for CSO representatives to know each other and describe what they would want in a city.

Rümeysa Çamdereli from YADA Foundation indicated that they focused on ‘the variety of backgrounds of the participants’ and using a public arena as a tool make discussions more specific.

In the public arena activity, there were simultaneous sessions with smaller groups focused on 4 different topics. By this way, discussions were profound and time was used effectively. The discussion topics were chosen from common interests such as transportation, common areas in the city, governance, production, accessing to food and health facilities and housing.

Feedbacks from the discussions, in which all of the participants were a part of, were also very positive. It was emphasized that although this kind of activities usually involves a ‘transmitter’ and a ‘receiver’ group, it was very different in Meydan; everyone became a part of the conversation. One of the founders of ‘Kokopelli Şehirde’ (Kokopelli is in Town), Yasemin Kırkağaçlıoğlu said that there were many organizations that worked on similar subjects and she participated in the event due to the idea of ‘coming and finding solutions together’. Özgür Kahraman from Gelecek Avrupa Girişimi (Future is Europe Initiative) said that thanks to the event, different CSOs came together to talk about and listen to different ideas about the city. “This kind of events has to be more frequent,” he added. A representative of İYADER said that each topic refers to something else: “We talk about the city but we also have to talk about gender,” she said. Alper Tolga Akkuş, one of the editors of Yeşil Gazete (Green Gazette) said that although this kind of events creates an atmosphere of excitement, it doesn’t last long and he is curious about future events. On the other hand, there were also some critisim about the place of the event, some people commented that it should have been held in the nature, outdoors to make the best of the name ‘Meydan’ (Arena).

Among many of the topics discussed, there were some prominent ones: Although there were successful examples around the world, it was asked why city gardens could not be expanded in Turkey. CSOs’ faults were discussed. The fact that although CSOs join their forces together, they fail at creating alliances, was discussed. Ideas on how to encourage agriculture and food production were shared. In the governance session, representatives from Kadıköy City Council gave examples of good governance.

Alev Erkilet, who evaluated the sessions, said that thanks to the event a very meaningful path was followed and if repeated, the capacity of collaborating among CSOs would increase.

Common evaluations of the participants were mostly about the importance of repentance and sustainability of the event. Ceylan Özünel from YADA Foundation said that it was a ‘dialogue meeting’ and according to the feedbacks, they would shape the future events. “We plan to hold workshops and common case studies with smaller groups,” she said. The next event will focus on ‘women’.