Ibn Haldun University (IHU) organized a TEDx talk on Wednesday, July 18 at Başakşehir Campus. The event is an opportunity to gather people from different background in order to share ideas worth spreading. The first Tedx of Ibn Haldun University saw inspiring talks. This year’s speeches of Ibn Haldun University TEDx were under the scope of themes such as “Intellectual independence”, “Open civilization” and “Liberation of the mind.” The event, which started with an introductory video about TEDx, was moderated by Zia Eshanzada, the Lead Campaign Specialist at TRT World Citizen. Ibn Haldun TEDx was joined by president of our university, our faculty members, students and guests from outside the university. Dr. Kerem Kınık, President of Turkish Red Crescent, was the first speaker of the first session of the three sessions, he delivered a speech titled “2030 Vision of Türk Kızılay in the Light of Global Goals”.
In his speech, Kınık stressed out that in humanitarian work it is important to firstly explore the symptoms of a problem then diagnose the case, finally produce a treatment. “Symptoms are hunger, displacement, refugees, climate change. This means in numbers 20.000 human being become refugees every day, 6 million children die from disasters, polluted air, soil and water, mankind produces 4 billion tons of food 3 billion of it is wasted, half million children are recruited as soldiers, 1 billion person have no access to clean water, 1 billion goes to bed with hunger, ladies spend 300 million dollar on cosmetics, etc. We have a humanitarian team that works around the clock with a motto of ‘protecting every individual entire this world’. We as humanitarian actors try to protect humanity according our principles” said Dr. kınık. “How can we overcome the challenges of the upcoming ten years in rapidly changing world? We developed the 2030 vision of Turkish Red Crescent to answer this question. We are going to fight against hunger, inequity and natural disasters by empowering our society and shifting to finance small projects” added Dr. kerem Kınık.
Kınık stated that the Turkish Red Crescent is going to focus on protecting the environment by raising awareness of ‘Zero Waste Culture’ and waste recycling among people. Kınık stressed out that protecting people in disasters is also considered in the vision of 2030, “There are 4.4 billion injured from fluids, earthquakes and heatwaves. We are shifting disaster management from institutions to community by training our community how to deal with disasters before and after it happens. In Turkey we have 50 billion Dollar of waste food it is too much.” Dr. Kınık finished his speech with these words “Turkish Red Crescent’s duty is to alleviate human suffering, our duty is to educate and train people. We have no plan B because we don’t have planet B.”
The second speaker of the first session was Prof. Erik Ringmar, Lecturer of Political Science and International Relations at Ibn Haldun University. Professor Ringmar delivered a speech titled “Alternatives to the state, what is a non-Western IR theory?” Professor Ringmar stressed out that the academic study of international relations has for far too long been dominated by theories and concepts with their origin in the West. “Understandably, people elsewhere in the world are not satisfied with this. This is particularly true for quickly developing countries with a lot of self-confidence — such as China, but people in India, Brazil and even Turkey aren’t happy either. They have their own interests and perspectives — and they want the academic study of international relations to reflect this fact. What they are demanding is a “non-Western IR theory.” “IR” here refers to the study of “international relations,” and non-Western IR theories are theories without a Western bias.” Underlined prof. Erik Ringmar.
“Imagine a world in which the Ottoman Empire was not abolished in 1923, or a world in which a political structure such as the Ottoman Empire could be recreated. Here people of different ethnicities would be able to share the same political space; and everyone would get to live in the country of their imagination. A Jew could easily imagine herself living in Israel, while her Palestinian neighbor could imagine himself living in Palestine. And some, no doubt, would identify themselves as Ottoman. Jewish culture would still flourish in Cairo and Baghdad; there would still be Greeks in Constantinople and Smyrna.” According to Ringmar, a non-Western IR theory is not only a science, but it is a political project too and it had disastrous consequences because of the western reaction against it. “A non-Western IR is an attempt to try something different. The day when we think of international relations in non-Western terms, we will all be living in a more just, and perhaps even a more peaceful, world” concluded Prof. Ringmar.
Seda Yekeler, Founder and President of Educational foundation SEYEV, contributed to Ibn Haldun University’s TEDx by her talk under the title “You are more than your genetics”. Yekeler started her talk introducing herself, “I was born in Ankara as the daughter of a civilian family. As a soldier girl, I traveled to another school every year, so I learned not to connect to a single house, a single room, a single class, and I always reflected this philosophy, which I discovered with great difficulty, as innovations in business life.” Yekeler, who completed the Foreign Language Department of Anamur Super High School of the district of Mersin, clarified the meaning of ‘you are more than your genetics’ by saying that meeting new people and relocating to new places which is not what you used to do and deal with, is more than our genetics, “at first we should success to survive in our world. In Anamur I learned this ‘The width of your life is much more significant than the length of your life’ the far you go far from your vest, the more you learn. I have never ever burnt any opportunity for a temporary comfort”. The youngest founder of charity foundation in Turkey, ended her talk with advices to the young audiences, “Take risk, never burn an opportunity, welcome equally your ups and downs, be more human, love learning not studying, celebrate yourself, learn foreign languages to welcome new culture.”
Prof. Halil Berktay, Head of History Department at Ibn Haldun University, delivered his talk in the second session of TEDx under the title of “Eurocentrism: a many-layered thing” “At the establishment era of social sciences by Europeans, the 18th and the early 19th centuries, Europeans knew little about the world. Throughout this period a many-layered thing ‘accumulation’ of covering the history of only Europe infiltrated into social sciences. Tending to the rest of the world to be marginalized, they took what themselves know and put it in a new sociology. They changed the horizontal world to a hierarchal world, a world consisting of superiors ‘the west’ and inferiors the ‘others’ considering them as ‘not civilizations’. Later, they considered them the civilizations but classified them into ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ like the binary series of ones and zeros, the differentiated them into Active ‘the west’ and passive ‘others’ dynamic and lazy. They consider that this world consisting of two main religions Christianity and Judaism or the two religions ‘Christianity and Judaism’ Vs Islam” expressed Prof. Berktay.
Gökhan Yücel, senior adviser of Turkish Minister of National Education, gave a talk titled “Apocalypse Now Redux: AI Is the Latest Metaphysical Race” Yücel pointed out that Artificial Intelligence (AI) showed up firstly in a scientific article goes back to 1950. The article, which started with a philosophical question “Can machines think?”, evaluated the (AI) from a psychological and philosophical point of view. Yücecl reviewed many studies related to (AI) and his current study focuses on how the Andalusian Arab Scholar Ibn Arabi wrote previously about (AI). Yücel concluded “there is a metaphysical race stands behind the (AI), this race has three working areas, combination of machine and human being, metaphysical race in which machine act like human being and lastly, the metaphysic of us.” At the third session Prof. Recep Şentürk, President of Ibn Haldun University, gave a TEDx talk titled “Independent thinking, learn to think outside the box”.
Prof. Şentürk asked a question at the opening of his talk “Why do we have a school?”. He answered “Schools are there for intellectual independence, but some people don’t accept this asking how we could control people if they are intellectually independent. Education should teach us how to think outside the box, in my opinion this is the source of power for the society,” President Şentürk said that the school has the responsibility of teaching students how to produce ideas instead of teaching them the ideas itself, “I used to not give permission to schooling to interfere with my education. We have to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery by confronting three hurdles which are Eurocentric, biased media and egocentrism, two of them are outside powers and one is inside us.” The means to confront these hurdles, according Şentürk, are Intellectual Independence and Interdisciplinary method, excluding the western indoctrination and promoting a healthy process of character building.
At the 3rd session of Ibn Haldun TEDx Assist. Prof. Hakkı Öcal, Head of Media and Communications Department at Ibn Haldun University, delivered a talk entitled “How media affect the human condition”. Prof. Öcal stated that our life is transactional events lead us to become self-aware beings and that could be interpreted in different ways by philosophers. He emphasized that communication is far more important and central to the human condition “Thus, communication theory must encompass all that it means to live a life, the shape of social institutions and cultural traditions, the pragmatics of social action, and the poetics of social order." Prof. Hakkı Öcal stated that thinking is the action that could be taken against lies of media which is according Öcal “Not the new media... social media... not the digital networks. But “media” old and new, traditional or nontraditional (unconventional, uncustomary).”
Assist. Prof. Munira Mohamed Alaboudi, Vice Dean of School of Education at Ibn Haldun University, addressed the factors which contribute to the success of young generation in their life. Her inspiring talk became under the title “Take an active role in your unfolding”. Resembling human being to a flower in the unfolding process and screening, Alaboudi delivered her Tedx talk with a musical video depicting the blooming of different flowers. an advice written by a Syrian refugee, who fled her country because of the war and relocated to Turkey, to all people in order to achieve success in their lives, “In order to start your success story respect yourself, respect people and paly active role in your life” said Alaboudy. “You have to focus on four keys to be a meaningful member of the society, stay away from negativity, use fear as a fuel, surround yourself with support and finally, follow your curiosity” Alaboudi summed up. The event, which consisted of four sessions, ended with a souvenir group photo. TEDx is a local, self-organized event of TED, where x means independently self-organized TED event. For more details about TEDx of Ibn Haldun University visit: https://tedx.ihu.edu.tr/ or Watch the speeches on YouTube.
