Peacebuilding from the Local
Our Local Peacebuilding project starting in August 2020 stems from the need to rethink the limitations of mainstream peace-making efforts prevailing in Turkey as well as worldwide. We seek to offer alternatives from Turkey to the dominant liberal and political elite-based peace-making approach, particularly with regards to the Kurdish issue in Turkey. We build our approach on two main pillars, which consist of rendering visible the historical experiences of peaceful coexistence of different ethnic, religious and/or doctrinal groups in Anatolia and Mesopotamia and coming up with suggestions to eliminate the racism and sexism from within them. With this in mind, we designed a two-phase project, the first of which involves unpacking the topic at length through blog entries with those willing to engage in this discussion, and the second of which asking the writers of selected blog entries to expand on their work to turn their entries into articles for a book. In this manner we aim to put together a collective book focusing on possibilities for radicalizing peace from the local level.