Conscience Guest
We are living in a strange era where fighting, hatred and intolerance have become the norm and people constantly alienate the “other” whom they do not consider as their own with the most serious accusations and do not hesitate to insult, humiliate and even use physical violence. In these days when our society has lost its common fundamental values and human criteria have disappeared from our moral world, we are left with our conscience as a guide.
In this period when superiority, arrogance, power, being chosen, and sacred cause are at their peak, we are making an effort to invite people to common sense and to enable them to talk to the others they hate. This is why we organize conscience meetings. Our aim in organizing these events is to open small windows and create opportunities where people can listen to the troubles experienced by the other, whom they hate and make up adjectives, and look at others through the window of conscience.
This weekend, we realized a first in conscience meetings and instead of holding our event at our foundation center, we went to visit. Our host was Syrian refugee Osama al-Bushi, who had previously participated in conscience meetings. While sipping our Syrian-style tea and coffee, we listened to Osama and his young brother Mahmud describe the pain they experienced as children in the civil war, the stories of their lost relatives, and the homeland they remembered with longing.
We talked about how the uncontrolled hatred and xenophobia that came to light with the Kayseri incidents made us feel. We talked about the injustices we experienced and the spiral of hatred that our society has fallen into.
We talked about how the tensions expected to arise between the two sides of migration, the migrant population and the host population, could be resolved in a humane way, cultural rights and integration. We talked about kind-hearted, helpful hosts and bad-behaving hosts. We talked about kind-hearted, accommodating guests and bad-involved guests.
The best moment of the day was meeting Rukiye, Osama's two-month-old little daughter who became a father for the first time. We wished our daughter a free and happy life.
We realized that holding Meetings of Conscience in lived spaces creates a completely different experience.
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