The Fourth Project Meeting in Bursa

The fourth project meeting took place in Turkey and was hosted by the Polis Koleji in Bursa

Participants
The Romanian team (Mariana Hudrea and Florian Nechit plus their pupils) arrived on Monday 24 May followed by the remaining teams the following day;
Alasdair Watts and Isabelle Roy from France, Wolfgang Mertens , Till Winkler and Rolf Albrecht from Germany, Monica Meneghelli and Patrizia Tommasi from Italy, Jola Prodanowska and Dorata Boryczko from Poland. Altogether 15 foreign pupils attended the project meeting from these five countries.

Accommodation
All staff were accommodated at the Bursa Kent Hotel in the centre of Bursa and pupils by host families. Teachers all expressed satisfaction regarding the choice of the hotel which was ideally situated in the heart of Bursa and offered an unrivalled view of the City. Staff had very positive feedback from pupils concerning host families.

Wednesday
The official meeting began on Wednesday 26 May. We were first received by the Governor who greeted us warmly in the Governor’s Palace on behalf of the regional authorities. The Governor stressed the importance Turkey in general and Bursa in particular attaches to such European projects as ours. After the reception the group visited the Bursa Kent Museum and was introduced to the local Bursa history, architecture, economy and civil society. We then made our way to the Town Hall where the Mayor of Bursa received us in his office. The Mayor provided us with invaluable information about the city, notably its rapid expansion, the growing importance of manufacturing industry etc. A sign of this confidence is Bursaspor’s recent winning of the Turkish football championship in which the Mayor expressed his pride.
In the afternoon students made their presentations on the theme of immigration in the premises formally serving as a Haman or Turkish bath and now used as a cultural centre.
(short summaries of the presentations can be found in the annex)
The day’s activities concluded with a Classical Music Concert at Tayyare Kultur Merkezi in the centre of Bursa.

Thursday
We spent Thursday morning at the Bursa Polis Koleji, initially in the lecture theatre where the school director made an opening address to welcome us to his school, outlining the school’s ethos, aims and ambitions. This was followed by a round table discussion similar to those we have held at each of our four project meetings. Ethnic Turks from Greece and Bulgaria as well as an Italian immigrant from Turin related their experience of leaving their country of birth to settle in Turkey. Students and teachers had an opportunity to dialogue with them.
We were then divided into groups and some teachers and students were taken to the school’s shooting range in the basement to practice their shooting skills while others took part in English classes.
In the afternoon we were taken to the Karagöz Museum to enjoy the traditional Turkish shadow puppet theatre involving the two characters Hacivat and Karagöz. The resident puppeteer is responsible for all aspects of production, including the creation and design of the puppets themselves, the writing of the scenario as well as the manipulation of the puppets and the different voices.
We moved on to visit the 600 year-old Historical Plane Tree in the picturesque village of Inkaya and the day’s cultural activities concluded with an impressive performance of rock music, dance and traditional Turkish music given by the students of the Bursa Polis Koleji in the school lecture theatre to rapturous applause.


Friday
We made an early start on Friday and were driven to Cumalikizik Village in the Yıldırım sub-province where, after a copious Turkish breakfast, we were able to examine the perfectly preserved characteristics of Ottoman architecture.
We then returned to the Bursa Polis Koleji where students were placed in mixed nationality groups, this time with the task of producing and presenting in mixed groups posters promoting the underlying message of tolerance and anti-racism that has been prevalent throughout the two years of our project.
After lunch students and teachers were divided into two groups and taken to the headquarters of two NGOs in charge of assisting ethnic Turks returning to their homeland as well dealing with problems of discrimination faced by ethnic Turks living abroad.
Back in the centre of Bursa we were offered a Sema or Whirling Dervish Show in which dancers dressed in flowing white robes whirled around for forty minutes accompanied by prayers and holy music amazingly without showing the slightest signs of dizziness.
In the evening all participants attended a dinner at the Bursa Kent Hotel. The director of the Bursa Polis Koleji honored us with his presence and gave a final speech thanking us for participating on the project and hoping future collaboration would be possible in the years to come. The local press published various articles on this Comenius project and even the Turkish TV broadcast parts of the fourth meeting.


Saturday
On Saturday we returned to Istanbul, crossing the Sea of Marmara this time by the express ferry from Mudanya. Students and teachers were delighted to discover on arriving in Istanbul a police escort awaiting us to accompany us to the Istanbul police restaurant overlooking the Bosphorus where we enjoyed a hearty breakfast before setting off to discover the beauty of Istanbul (the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, the Tagpapi Palace as well as a memorable boat trip on the Bosphorus).
Teams returned home on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 May.


A word of thanks
All colleagues and students expressed their delight at all aspects of this fourth and final project meeting. Our Turkish hosts offered us wonderful hospitality and were constantly concerned that all our needs were attended to. The programme was rich, varied and very professionally organized.

Alasdair Watts
Project Coordinator


Annex

1/ The German Presentaion

Many topics related to immigration and integration are frequently covered by the German press. One are the so-called “honour killings“, a term that is used when a family drama occurs in an immigrant family. It enhances people’s fears of immigrants, just as the topic of fundamentalism among immigrants, such as the Turkish neo-fascist movement of the “Grey Wolves“.
However, the media more and more also cover topics that evoke positive feelings with regard to immigrants, for example successful integration projects. One of them is the “mentor project“ supported by the German government. Committed citizens help individuals with a migration background, especially students with school problems. Another example is the “Ernst-Reuter-Initiative“ which supports German-Turkish cooperation.
On the local level, the city of Seelze has, just like other communities, developed various programs that provide help for immigrants. The local newspapers cover these efforts continuously.

2/ The French Presentation
The four French students first showed a film they had made entitled ‘I’ve had Three Lives’. It features a ‘pied noir’ or white French Algerian called Denise Vabre who was forced to leave Algeria after it gained independence in 1962. She expresses the love she feels for the land where she grew up and the difficulty she experienced adapting to life in mainland France.
The second presentation was called ‘We work, we strike’ and dealt with the protest movement in March 2010 which saw immigrant workers in France and across Europe down tools to raise awareness of the discrimination they face


3/ The Italian Presentation
Islam and Western culture meet together through immigration. Is the integration a problem or a phenomenon In Italy?
Our presentation is a synthesis of our work of analysis and discussion about newspaper articles and interviews which reflect different Italian points of view on this topic. In this period the debate in the Italian media about the difficulties and positive aspects of immigration and possible integration between people of a different culture and religion is open and vivacious. In our classes of “responsible and active citizenship” we made deeper our research interviewing people who know and live personally integration among people of different religions. A theology and philosophy teacher, a Catholic priest who worked for a long of time with immigrants, a Turkish lady living in Italy. The point of strength of the project is the comparison and synthesis concerning the situations in the six different countries involved in this project .
4/ The Turkish Presentation
As the hosting school of the final meeting the Turkish team decided to reflect on the theme of immigration in two ways. The first one consisted of Interviews and presentations of the immigrants (Ethnic Turks from Greece and Bulgaria as well as an Italian living in Bursa) and visits to NGOs connected to Immigrants.
We also thought it would be worthwhile to give inclusive information about the immigration from Turkey to European countries. Germany was the leading country with Turkish immigrants so we studied on “Immigration of Turkish citizens to Germany” with three subtitles “Guest workers, Family Unifications and Incentives for Returns”.
5/ The Polish Presentation
The first presentation made by Polish students was a film about one of the largest groups of immigrants in Poland – the Vietnamese. They come for many reasons, but particularly economic ones. The journey is very expensive, costing about 4000 dollars and is organized by special agencies operating in Vietnam. The film outlines the difficulties some face integrating into Polish society but it also shows that there are many success stories.

The second deals with the story of a woman called Swietlana, who came to Poland from The Ukraine in 1995 to earn a living after the Ukrainian factory where she worked started to pay its employees in kind (cloth instead of money). Shortly after settling in Poland she discovered she had terminal cancer. The film focuses on her quest for a foster family in Poland to avoid her four children being sent back to Ukraine after her death.

6/ The Romanian Presentation

700 Years of Turkish-Romanian Relationships

At the end of the 14th century the borders of the Ottoman Empire reached the Danube River
The relations with the Romanian Principalities were often tense till 1877 when Romania became independent.
Many Turks remained to live in the south and south east of the country.
Today the majority of the Turks live in the historical region of Northern Dobruja (Turkish: Dobruca), particularly in Constanţa County, where they number 24,246 and make up 3.4% of the population, in Tulcea County : 3,334 (1.3%), in Bucharest : 2,473 (0.1%).
As an officially-recognized ethnic minority, the Turks have one seat reserved for them in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies.
After 1989, a significant number of Turkish entrepreneurs started investing and establishing business ventures in Romania, and a certain proportion chose to take up residence in Romania.
At the same time many Turks living in Romania immigrated to Turkey to live with their relatives there.