Wednesday was a day of a stormy debate about the problem of incompatibility of North and Southbetween participants and experts: Aslı Erdoğan, Andrei Pleșu and László Rajk moderated by Michal Vašečka.
Multidimensional Europe. Southern perspective
“Refugees are not a real problem for EU – the biggest one are member states themselves” –started the discussion László Rajk, an expert from Hungary. He showed the problem of the impact of populism on the politics of EU and the danger of the lack of institution which can act as a checks and balances system. He also mentioned that referendums are getting more and more popular, but they do not really work in practice and they are only populist ideas.
The second expert, Aslı Erdoğan who was born in the European part of Turkey, told about the problems of identity. She said that identify is not so important, because it is imposed by others. “Nobody is satisfied by being only a human” – she noticed. The Turkish writer stressed also that although she supports Turkey's EU membership, the majority of Turkish people don’t want to join the EU, because they feel unwanted there. On the other hand, they are afraid of being absorbed by Asian culture and that is why there is a need to “open a human corridors”.
About the situation of Turkey was talking also Andrei Pleșu from Romania. He stressed that even in 1840 Turkey wanted to be united with Europe. He also mentioned about two perspectives of Turkish identity: the country could be a bridge between East and West, but on the other hand it is nowhere. During the discussion with participants, Andrei Pleșu admitted that in the south part of Europe citizens have a complex of superiority, because it is the place where the European civilization was born. “We are not so good in technology, but we know how to live” – he stressed.
Challenges of multiculturalism
The second part of debate was dedicated to multiculturalism and showed that the perception of reality is much more important than the true reality. Many EU politicians say that multiculturalism is dead but experts confirmed that is not true. “Putting people side by side is not multiculturalism yet” – mentioned Andrei Pleșu. He also showed the clash of globalization and nowadays way of seeing multiculturalism.
During the discussion about recent EU problems László Rajk told again about the destructive impact of populism. He also showed that dealing with the refugee problem is like playing volleyball – every country want to throw the ball to the other side. “It is a shame” – he said about the behavior of all V4 countries, which do not want to help refugees.
The audience asked not only about the recent crisis but also about the role of intellectuals in changing the situation of cultural minorities and the difficulties of writing in non-native language. When the discussion ended, participants continued the students’ projects, which they had started on the previous day.
