 He is the editorial page editor of Turkish Daily News, which is one of two, one English speaking Turkish newspapers. And he has also written for the Wall Street Journal of Washington Post various things like also an author of a book on the Kurdish question. We'll start now, please. Good morning or good afternoon, I hope so. And first of all, many thanks for the comments and your team for organizing this event and having you here. It's really very interesting. I don't need any very interesting talks. Well, my topic is the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in which question. And I think that you, as a person a little bit, that's the problem of what the Ottoman Empire was. I'm sure you're all familiar with what you know about that. Let me see how I see the Ottoman Empire and how I see the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Empire, which I've seen as a very useful phenomenon, which explains many things in the territory. Is there any problems in the territory, including the Kurdish? One of the Ottoman Empire was where you were born and lived there once. And it lasted for more than six centuries. And from the 13th century, basically 1922, 1922 would be the end of the Ottoman Sultanate. So it lasted for a long time. And it's ruled what we call the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa today, including the ceasefire. We are now dead. And one of the remarkable things about the Ottoman Empire, I mean, there are things that really, I think, are very interesting. I think one of the remarkable virtues of the Ottoman Empire was that it was clueless. It was a multi-ethnic and multi-lucid. Well, many parts like that already, but not all. And especially in the Middle Ages in Europe, states that used to, in part of their beliefs, their ideas to be found, like we saw at the Catholic state, the Catholic King of Spain, trying to convert all these thoughts. Whereas in the Ottoman Empire, it was accepted that Jews and Christians had different faiths or different ethnicities were there, and they had their faiths and they were accepted. And this actually comes from the basic teaching of Islam, which respects today's Christianity. Although it's there seems somewhat like not as good as Islam, it's still there. It's said, well, there isn't a truth in those traditions. So they are accepted to exist. And the Ottomans accepted Jews and Christians. They're Christian denominations. They're from the Ottomans. They're from the Greeks. They're from the Churches. They accepted their existence. And they lived in the Ottoman Empire. And actually, interestingly, when the Uber itself in Spain became not too surprising to all of them, or anything at all in the Jews' creative space. Well, of course, they were not any cool citizens until the 19th century. And the traditional Islamic law regarding the Christian decedentity, which was protected by the Sultanate of Constantinople. But they were given a really cool citizenship in the 19th century on the forums, which brought in many ideas from the West, like constitutionalism, and the idea of a cool citizenship. And when the Ottoman Empire, I think that's an important thing we should know. The Ottoman Empire was, in some ways, a pretty modern empire from a long perspective. But the other thing is, the empire started to modernize itself from the 18th century on. And especially in the 19th century, there were many legal reports. And in the 19th century, to learn about Western ideas, the Ottoman Empire took two to three minds. And they had to be had from the next century with much more than they explained to us in a good way. And there were the basics, the French enlightenment and the British way of modernization, for example. And so on, we were more inspired by British liberalization. Others were more influenced by the French Revolution and the general administration of the Enlightenment because of what the society was doing. To develop an answer to the base. In the Ottoman Empire, we had the liberal part, the off-right part, which is freedom's intervention. It was right there in the early 40s. We had a good defense clause. So the modernization of the empire started and that's why the Ottoman Empire had a constitutional warrant in the 18th century. This is important because the official Turkish history of Republic depicts the Ottoman Empire as a dark age and then the Republic came to us and shone by the sun and enlightened all of us before the darkness. This is not true. Of course, the Republic brought in many reforms and continued modernization. There's a history of that. It did not come to the 18th century. Now, of course, this multi-ethnic and multi-religious of the iterative structure of the Ottoman Empire started to crumble down, started to disintegrate in the 19th century, basically because of the nationalists. And first, the Balkan minorities, in other words, the Balkans, when they started the national revolt against the empire and destroyed the influence and they gained their ancient states. So the empire started with the trees that were built best and in actual nationalist ways both with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the modern traditional state and the great tragedy of the development of the Armenians in 1915 which is very much debated right now in Turkey and all around is a problem, not the Ottoman system, but a problem with the fall of the Ottoman system. Because the Armenians existed under the Ottoman rule of succession that we're having now. Actually, the Armenians defied the Armenians as the loyal nation. But when Armenian nationals in the Armenian region were supported, you had a reaction to nationalism and in the war years, during World War I, especially in the faithful year of NDPT, you had an Armenian nation coming in and back rushing against the fight for government which led to the deportation of the Armenians and which led to the war with tragedy. And for sure, but it was because of the fall of the system. And what happened was that during the last decades of the development of the empire there were different ideological trends. One was called Ottomanism. And the Ottomanism trend was saying, well, we are only cool citizens. Let's just emphasize the cool citizenship of all citizens. Let's try to keep it in the Ottoman model. Yet, the idea was exclusive which was much more refined and sophisticated than today's Islamic fundamentalists. And it was a way of saying, well, the Christian nations will go and there's no way that you can now keep them in the empire. But let's emphasize the sons and unifying ones in different states of the empire. And there was Turkism as a period of elements. And the Turkists said that, well, Turks are really the core of the empire. And others will go. Arabs will go. Albanians will go. So, just let's look at the side of the Turkish. And he had debates in the right way in these two groups. Well, Ottomans had died a little bit earlier because it was obvious that he would have used the Greek sort of surgeons for both areas. And especially, that's the Balfour force in which many of the nations fought against the empire. Ottomans were important. But they didn't have these basics in Islamist and Turkists. And of course, they were different shapes in the way of the 15th century. And what happened was, when the Turkism was founded after the war of liberation against the Ottoman powers, because Turkey was occupied. And Turkey, in the first place, was the rule of war on the one side of Germany. And the Axis powers were both war. And after the war, Turkey was occupied by Greece, partly by British, and in several places under British occupation. So, the Turks, the Turks, and actually the only groups in Anatolia fought a war of liberation against these powers. And then Turkey was a new war of liberation, the Turks, and the Turkey, and the war of the world's war. And the Turkish Republic was proclaimed in 1923. And I think there's a faithful point here. The Turkish war of liberation was not led by a revolutionary commentary or something. It was led by a part of the Turks. Part of the Turkish, not Turkish, but part of the Turkish, which included Turks, Kurds, and some Arabs, which were still the unsoulful ones. And in all sorts of different people, like in the mountains, some very central people, it was a globalist part which really represented the whole nation. And in the parliament, you had two difference all the time. There were two different trends. One was called the first group, the other one was called the second group. And the first group was very much tied to the persona, or from someone came out of Turkey's boundary, the first president. The second group was, I don't know if they were different. They were still fighting for independence if they hadn't been born here. And soon, the first group turned into the people's Republican party, the CHP, which I think she shows. And its leader wasn't the one who had it. But he was at full time. And the second group was not only on the same page, and he was, for a time, it turned into, he led by a thousand creditors to another general level of difficult creation. And in 1923, the JNF head was there. And in 1924, the second group turned into another party, called the African-American Party, or the progressive party. So what he basically had is two different parties from the U.S. and the World Revolution. And the CHP was very much influenced by what I would call an enlightenment fundamentalism. And it's the same idea of French revolutionaries that you need to learn to modernize. You need to create a homogenous nation. All ethnic differences should be swipe aside. You should highlight the mind of the language. You should get a religion and tradition, as we just became, because religion is by definition a backwards. And freedom is good, but unless you achieve this modernity, freedom is bad. So you have to post home freedom to the clients in which you convert everybody to what you want. And if you can turn people into new human beings, freedom is good. But I thought that until that point, you cannot move exactly more than what you want to do. That would see us here, which came from our general official office. And that was the second part of the more recent part. Well, they were not inspired by the inclusion. They were, first of all, not that much in focus on states as an Asian modernity. They were living in free markets. They wrote a book about it. There is an emphasis on free markets. There were more influenced by the British tradition of modernization. In which tradition and religion is not seen as an end, but it just continues on the way as you modernize and you can harmonize the institution and modernity. And they were interestingly and never interestingly interested in integrating the current in Turkey. In fact, in the first century, Charles Mperry, the leader of the party, wrote a published report in 1924. But this report occurs. And I would not move because I was interested in this. He said, we should integrate the current through any culture, through this posturing and through spreading education, and through emphasizing the common traditional values of the sport that occurs. Whereas the CHP was thinking about Turkey finding the current. And they did. In fact, what happened was that there was indeed a Kurdish rule in 1925 that encouraged both. And CHP, first of all, Russia revolved. And then closed down the second progress of the party, the Bolsheviks party, and established a single party regime as we call Turkey. Single party regime is actually using the current through its big military. And so, and not just this second party, but all the civil society is crushed. I mean, so people are going to go down. And huge movements will be closer to go down. Feminists will go to it. Everything outside of state structure will be able to go down because they believe in the principle of that states should really guide the whole society. And in the 30s, this trend, this was return tradition, became even much more solidified because in the main, the 30s was a time where in which you had a very much return period, not a period of life, so when you was there, well, so many things didn't that seem to me. But it's highly implemented, and so on. And Turkey's TV, in the 70s, the first in the 70s, we took this but we were going to be able to take it. We had the but we were going to be able to take it. We took it there to be the C-grade of the army of the nation. And the size of the Turkish skull was fading with the process. So some of these races came into play there. Well, what happened was that these ideas didn't prevail that much, but their And it was through the very wide range of national vote. And the state thinks nationality is a great thing. National is all over the island. And the country is staying strong. And I think that states and its attorneys in that region still continues and continues all the way. But what happened was, I just said, the second line was a crush. The more conservative the national vote was, crushed in 1925, but didn't die out, of course. And Turkey had its first fair and free elections. Well, we had elections in the old time at the Republican time. The first of the free elections was held in 1950. And what happened in 1950? The part of which represented the conservative slash liberal line came to power with the motto, enough, the nation has the word. Because that's just because the nation has the word is an interesting phenomenon, because in the 30s, the CHP, the elites defined themselves as the governments for the people in spite of the people. That's different from what we in the American government, people in spite of the people. So the opposition, which was crushed, came back under the name of the Republican Party. And they came with a great vote. And the people were fed up with this conservative regime. And they would vote three elections in a row. All of the 1950s and 60s was under the democracy party. And Turkey tried. We got the first foreign investment. There was the Marshall Plan, where everybody came in. And Turkey just openly came in. There was NATO. The economy really became a great progress. And what happened about the 1960s, the military stage of military coup, because the republic was going in a wrong way. It was diverging from their original mind. They executed the prime minister, came to the ministers, that's for short trial. And they, again, restored order. And then we had multi-cruel rules, and many direct rules, and still go down into a team. And this dichotomy between this authoritarian state commission and, of course, the part of society which likes that, because any kind of authoritarian regime, some people like it, because it's a big band of a fact. But the bigger part of society doesn't like that. So you have this psychology between this authoritarian state commission and the whole supply issue that's been speaking to you. And all the other men who have this conservative slash liberal, slash Kurds, slash parties and all of this big chunk of people who just want a more open system, a more open regime. Interestingly, liberals have been very influential in 2000, and they create the fire power in virtual world. They just read the ideas in which conservatives are getting more and more interested. And I think thanks to this tradition, right now we are having a very interesting synthesis of this kind of liberalism, which I think to prompt some more of the world. And that's not a issue which I do not want. But I think today, I don't know if it's very important in creating this synthesis of these things that I'm actually talking about. Okay, a lot of the questions we need to speak about these and maybe I should follow on the curve a little bit. And well, I think this background can give us an idea that these pieces could be on the Kurds. I think the Kurdish history is important because in the case study of this tertiary tradition, it's a case study that shows that how the tertiary tradition really far represents the modernization of creating a new building. The other part, over there, the local world, has been very important to us. I think currently, when I mentioned, we have a lot of students in the country, you're talking about the Kurds, they're students, they're going to be a part of the Kurds, they're going to be a part of it. They're going to be a part of it. They're going to be a part of it, so we get it all into the world and so forth, but that's not going to be about being about being about being about being about being about it. So that is the history of this kind of thing. And currently, we're talking about the tertiary here, but they were wrong. The term mountain, the mountain in trouble is off there. Today, the country is not only a number of local families, but it's a language, it's a state rock, but it's a country. It's a thing that's related to the Russo-German civilization and the ways that the country has to be. So in 2015, when I went to the Kurds, it was like when you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the Kurds, and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and you were in the U.S. and the second one was theIntegri mountain. But there weren't any otherеньSerbians. I would trust any Ashurians it might be. I would say those are the major Beyonce people that the volcanos which was a big thing in the academic system. Everybody who wrote calls had 90% of the so-called intellectuals were reading, and thus they got all the information because they were sorry about Marxist, and what Reagan alone called the opium of intellectuals, was free, free of charge. And that Marxist trend created some Marxist theories for the feminist terror organizations, and one of them was heavily also influenced by the Kurdish identity. That was the PKK, which was part of the territory of the terrorist organization, and it's been in war against the government since 1984, and it killed so many people, so that's the territory of the organization. And to me, it's the anarchist movement. So, of course, the Kurdish state has some justification in this framework. I mean, yes, you talked about the population, and you created a problem, but then this doesn't justify terrorism, which is the influence of that. Okay, but seriously, you're not born in this point of energy. They always try to make it much better. Why do people think Marxist is beautiful? Why do you think Marxist is the one Marxist which ends in quite a bit? Both of them. Both of them think Marxist and Marxist, and the same thing for others. But obviously, I don't know what we're going to do with that, and how do you think our existence, based on things that we've created before, can be that critical, which can lead to a different moment in time. It can't be, you know, an opportunity to address the problem. The international state, since the election in 2007, this conservative slash liberal, the only party in the 80th century, 155% of the Kurdish vote, whereas the Kurdish nationalists, gained 25% of the votes, 20% of the votes in the 70s. We chose it not over the courage of the Kurdish nationalists to join today in the state, as many of them are Marxists, and many of them are happy in Turkey, which is liberal. But of course, that views is that, that party is now being trying to slow down by the constitutional court, which is it, which is the hair of that tradition, the state tradition, which Russia said it used to. That's going to have a change of time, but okay, great, thank you. Thank you. We have lunch now, and then after lunch, we'll have our first question, and then we'll discuss it.