Turkey's Journey of Change

Opening for a Solution A news-documentary programme describing the process of change Turkey has undergone in the context of its terrorism problem and the subsequent implementation of a democratic solution. CHAPTERS: Chapter 1 The first episode of the documentary features interviews with social scientists, social psychologists, political scientists and historians, analysing our mounting anxieties despite the advantageous position international politics has afforded Turkey. Chapter 2 This part narrates the change in the status quo that solidified after the Ottoman Empire dissolved over the last two centuries, during the First World War, the War of Independence, and the years of the Republic, built on losses and internal conflicts, in a picture that the conditions of the Cold War after the Second World War did not allow to be questioned. It presents a framework that explains the reasons that make change towards democratisation imperative today, and what the cost of resisting the status quo has been and could be. Chapter 3 Chapter 3 reveals that when words such as change, openness or democratisation are uttered in the current environment, the public's attention is directed towards the losses in the picture, which is a remnant of the “We don't want it” culture that we have carried with us for centuries. The chapter points out that while it is relatively easy to remove the psychological barrier to change, the main friction stems from the resistance of groups with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, which they perpetuate by exploiting the sensitivities of society. Chapter 4 This chapter shows how 30 years of ongoing conflict, including gang warfare, has created fertile ground for all kinds of corruption and pushed the country beyond Atatürk's principle of “peace at home”. and that the Turks and Kurds, whose unity is based on shared beliefs, historical agreements and a common destiny, are now faced with the challenge of increasing prosperity under a common roof, strengthened by democratic values and free from violence. Chapter 5 This chapter states that the democratic opening project cannot be considered separately from being a state decision. It explains that the National Security Council's explicit support for a political project for the first time in its half-century history and the Chief of General Staff's emphatic emphasis on democracy in his speech at the War Academies closed the door to conflicting interpretations. Chapter 6 It is stated that the goal of democratisation is, in fact, a change in mindset, and that Turkey's transformation involves changing a structure that makes people unhappy, is cumbersome, sceptical, hinders progress, is interventionist, and is designed to assign everyone a position according to a black-and-white world view and treat them accordingly, without deviating from the choices of the will that founded the Republic and its historical mission.