A Panel on Turkey in the Face of Imperialism, the Middle East and Our Martyrs Held at PAU

The panel held at PAU Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Yılmaz Congress and Culture Center was moderated by PAU Faculty of Medicine Dean Prof. Dr. Osman İsmail Özdel and the panelists were PAU Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Durmuş Akalın, PAU Faculty of Theology Faculty Member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Osman Aydınlı, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Palestinian Students Association in Turkey Dr. Abdurrahman Al-Farra.


Rector Kutluhan: "As a university, our main task is to better understand the policies of world states, our country, our environment and the Middle East."


Rector Prof. Dr. Ahmet Kutluhan delivered the opening speech of the panel. Rector Prof. Dr. Kutluhan stated the following in his speech: "This process, which started on October 7, 2023, burns and continues to burn all of us. As a university, our main task is to better understand the policies of world states, our country, our environment and the Middle East. Because why did we give 12 martyrs? Each of us must answer the question. Why are nearly 30,000 of our Palestinian brothers and sisters martyred right now? Again, we have to answer the question. We understood this very well in the 1900s with the War of Independence. Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha explained the event to us so well with the national map he drew that we established Kuva-i Milliye, then we switched to the regular army system and gained our independence. You know, we did a good work with Uzbekistan. The head of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan came. What did he say? While we, the Muslim Turkic world, are in captivity, it is good that the Republic of Turkey stands as an independent state! Again, we hosted Ersin Tatar, President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus at our university. They also talked about how they gained their independence here, but they still have not achieved full independence. Similarly, the Karabakh problem in Azerbaijan... We have to know ourselves well. Because imperialism attacks us with conspiracy theories, they call them conspiracy theories, but in fact they attack us with real theories. They say economic reasons, they say there is oil in the Middle East and they want to seize it. But it is not just oil, they are trying to destroy humanity here. Religiously, they deal with the situation with their own religious beliefs. They are trying to destroy this Muslim world, the Turkish Muslim world, which only defends rights and justice. Why are they trying to destroy it? As we always say, we are a country that is proud of our past. We are so proud of our past that our ancestors ruled the Balkans, ruled the Middle East, and no one even got a bloody nose. Wherever they went, we came there as servants, but now we see the opposite. The United Nations is called the United Nations, developed countries are called the United Nations, and none of the values they say have any value at the moment. We need to understand this very well. Dear students, we need to be able to answer these questions very well. We need to protect the Republic of Turkey, which was left to us, and we need to keep its independence alive forever. The importance of protecting this, as I mentioned before, humanity needs us. Not only the Middle East, but even America needs us. Because wherever we go, we bring not colonization, not torture, but justice and law. I would like to thank our esteemed moderator Osman Hodja for organizing this panel, our speakers, our guest from Istanbul and you, our participants, for spending your valuable time with us, and I would like to extend my respect to you all."


Prof. Dr. Özdel: "How are those walls in Gaza different from the walls in Berlin? They are similar to the walls built in Berlin in the 1940s."


Moderator of the panel, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Prof. Dr. Osman İsmail Özdel said the following in his speech "I would like to thank our professors who contributed to the preparation of such a panel and the panel. My biggest thank you is to our dear colleague, friend and fellow fighter Dr. Abdurrahman Al-Farra, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Palestinian Students Association in Turkey, who came all the way from Istanbul to be with us. I wish that the Palestinian struggle will end in victory like our War of Independence. I would like to draw attention to one point. Have you noticed the walls in Gaza? How are those walls in Gaza different from the walls in Berlin? They are similar to the walls built in Berlin in the 1940s. They are the same walls, and this shows us that the biggest reason why I am on the panel is that I am a psychiatrist. This shows that those who are traumatized in human psychology unfortunately appear as traumatizers. In other words, the society that was traumatized in the 1940s has now turned into the most important part of the genocide with all their power as a traumatizer. This is a very serious situation. It is one of the most important points that we should all think about. Traumatized societies turn into traumatizers and at the same time become the most important toy of imperial powers. Why would the Americans bring the Greeks against us? Why did the Greeks land in Izmir in 1919? Why did they put the Greeks there and not themselves? Because there was a relationship between us. Both societies seemed to have traumatized each other. In other words, they wanted to create new pains by making the past pains of these two societies clash with each other and somehow continue their directing on that theater stage. These are all very important topics of political psychiatry."

The program continued with the presentations of Panelists; PAU Vice Rector, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of History Lecturer Prof. Dr. Durmuş Akalın, PAU Faculty of Theology Lecturer Assoc. Prof. Dr. Osman Aydınlı, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Palestinian Students Association in Turkey Dr. Abdurrahman Al-Farra.