Green Camp
Green Camp 2018 – Alternatives
The Yeşil Kamp (Green Camp), hosted in Turkey in Çanakkale’s bay of Assos, Bektaş village by the Green Thought Association took place this year with participation by 153 people.
The participants were mostly young. We hosted 16 separate events featuring 32 guests over 3 days. Different from previous years, the camp was also host to an international event this year.
The Green School, co-hosted with the Green European Foundation (GEF), was on Wednesday, the 1st of August and featured theory presentations and workshops under three headings.
The first session of this Green School was the Rights of Nature and Environmental Constitutionalism panel, where facilitation was by Ümit Şahin, Senior Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center. Speakers were Rana Göksu, volunteer with the Green Thought Association and Georgi Velev of the Bulgarian Green Party’s Save Pirin campaign.
The second session was on Gender Policies and Queer Ecology. Sevil Turan of the Green Thought Association facilitated; speakers were Vesna Jesup, Member Party Relations Coordinator for the European Greens, Beatrice White from the Green European Foundation (GEF), and Teo Comet of the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG).
The third panel was on Food Sovereignty and Food Policies. Bengi Akbulut of the Ecology Collective was the facilitator here. Presenters were Leyla Aslan Ünlübay, president of the Buğday Association for Ecological Living, Ayşenur Arslanoğlu, leader of SlowFood Turkey, and Antoine Tifine of the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG).
In the evening, Akgün İlhan, lecturer at Boğaziçi University lead a workshop titled ‘How Should We Fight the Water Crisis?,” Cihan Koral Malak lead one on Gender and Queer Ecology, and Durukan Dudu of Anadolu Meraları (Graze-lands of Anatolia) lead one on Food Policy.
On the 2nd of August, The Yeşil Kamp started.
After introductions games with participants, the Introduction to Green Politics presentation which we have every year was made by Alper Akyüz, board member with the Green Thought Association.
Interior architect and designer Gökalp Ceylan together with participants designed fonts themed wind, sun, and coal.
Academic Sezai Ozan Zeybek gave a presentation as the last event of the day, titled Three Alternative Stories Regarding the Future of Democracy: What If Democracy is not What We Think It Is?
Participants started the day doing Yoga with instructor Tuba Yalçın on the 3rd of August. Post-breakfast, instructors from the Çamtepe School of Life of the Another School Is Possible Association discussed alternative education models and shared what they practice.
Rauf Kösemen of the Myra Social Good Agency opened up for debate how communication can create social good and in what areas this is possible.
After Lunch, lawyer Şebnem Eraş Çelebi, in her presentation Law for Life, talked on the similarities and differences between the legal rights of nature and legal rights of human beings.
Güneşin Aydemir, Green Thought Association member and founder of the Buğday Association for Ecological Living related in her presentation titled The Height of Alternatives: Nature, how alternatives presented by nature fully affects all aspects of life.
The last event of the day was the performance by trans activist Esmeray of her sketch Kestirmeden Hikayeler (Short-cut Stories).
Yoga with instructor Tuba Yalçın again started the day on the 4th of August. After breakfast, Bahar Vidinlioğlu lead a workshop on the Skinner technique of letting go as a means to rediscover harmony with nature.
Following Vidinlioğlu, Pikan Agency’s Communication Improvement Director Pınar İlkiz had a presentation on the management of human resources in improving civil society communications.
After lunch, the topic was renewable energy, on which the Green Thought Association has been working for a long time. Sevil Turan, General Coordinator of the Green Thought Association along with Oral Kaya, Director of Troya Environmental Association had a presentation titled The Sun and the Wind Suffice for Us.
Alper Akyüz, board member with the Green Thought Association, in his presentation Alternatives in Organising and Civil Society, lead a discussion on in what political areas civil society can exist and organise.
The last event of the day and of the camp was the presentation on rethinking the body as an instrument along with Ömer Ongun, one of the dancers of the Kardeş Türküler music ensemble, where the participants joined in a percussion show.
On Sunday the 5th of August, after a group photo, we had the session where participants shared their requests and wishes and the camp closed.
Green Camp 2017 – Tale, Game and Language
Green Thought Association’s traditional summer green camp was held in Bektaş village of Assos, Canakkale between July 20th and 23rd with the theme of “Tale, Game and Language”.
This year’s camp created a space where 135 participants got together to share ideas, emotions and experiences.
Together with 11 sessions, a lot of swimming breaks and small group discussions, this year’s green camp program was full of inspiration.
After the arrival of the participants late on Thursday afternoon and after the introduction, the first session of the camp was presented by art historian Zerrin İrem Boynudelik under the title of “Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks and Green Art”. The discussion was around the questions of the democratic nature of human creativity and participatory art as Beuys liked to provoke people to discuss about.
One of the main topics of the camp was, as usual, ecology and climate change. The second day started with Murat Akhuy’s session on “The structure of soil, microbiological life and food chain” and continued with a practical compost workshop.
For the participants who are new to green thought and green politics, Özgecan Kara talked about the history and the principles of green thought. Afterwards, Ümit Şahin, in his session on climate change, discussed the question of why don’t we care about climate change. He presented how climate change can find itself a place in language, speech and literature. This question on what kind of language needs to be used in order to mobilize people, was answered in the following session of Rauf Kösemen, called “Social advertisement and useful communication”. The questions of whether the apocalyptic rhetoric is working, how much people can relate to dying polar bears and breaking icebergs and tried to respond with the examples from other campaigns.
The session of Sezai Ozan Zeybek on “Not bringing everybody to schools but bringing schools to everywhere: the possibilities of an ecological education” put participants into a brainstorm on the positives and negatives of current national and alternative education systems. As one of the theme of this year’s camp was tales, Zeybek looked at tales as a tool for education and showed how powerful and transforming tales can be with new readings and interpretations.
The tale theme continued at Güneşin Aydemir’s session on “As a way to reconnect at the age of rupture: tales and storytelling”. The universal particularities of tales and storytelling traditions of Anatolia and the roles of storytellers in their community were presented. Güneşin underlined once again how reflective tales are for the community that they come from and how they can be used to creat a positive change in that community. That day ended up with a big circle in tale telling workshop. The story of a little girl started and spread from mouth to mouth while reviving participants creativity and storytelling talents.
Green camp means big circles. So another big circle was formed for Ömer Ongun’a “Language of Dance, Rhythm of the body ” workshop. The bodies turned into instruments and played music. Then, circle dances, as a common language of dance in Anatolia from Armenian, Kurdish, Laz cultures, were practiced. While the dance was ongoing, Omer explained the particularities of each style as reflection of their community. Even after the workshop ended, circle dance kept turning.
In the last day of the camp, young participants met with the call of Young Greens. They played games in order to know each other and each other’s ideas and discuss them. Then they made an appointment to meet again in the short future.
In the last session of the camp, before ( most of) the participants get back to their ‘cities from this small camp life, Ahmet Atıl Aşıcı made a reminder session about where they are heading back to and talked about the construction economy and its destructive nature.
Three apples fell from the sky. One for the organizers of the camp, one for the participants and one for the sea, the sand and the sun for hosting us.
Green Camp 2016
This year’s green camp was held on August 27th – 29th in Son Gemi Camping at Assos’s Bektaş village in Çanakkale. The camp aimed to remind people that we are part of nature, to understand the basis of international green thought, to meet with people who embodied ecologist values, to sing together, to swim, to laugh and most importantly to remember that we are part of a big family that wants to find solutions to the problems of the planet and respect nature rights.
Over 100 participants from different social spectrums, who want to live a more green life, looked for answers of an new alternative politics in Turkey. In the current political state of Turkey the need for alternative politics is necessary. The 10 principals of Green Politics which can be summarized as adaptation to nature, sustainability, global struggle, the rejection of patriarchy, rejection of violence, direct democracy, locality, global justice, free life and protection of diversity, were discussed. The possibilities of and tools for spreading Green Thought and Green Movement, which differs dramatically from the current way of doing politics, were discussed under the sessions titled; What kind of Green Movement, Building Consensus, Nature rights vs. Human Rights, Green Feminism, Food Politics, Animal Rights, Green Thought, Discussions on Opposing Technology and Alternatives and Green Solutions to Economic and Ecological Crises.
Green Camp 2016 was finalized with a wrap up meeting on the third day of the camp.
Green Camp 2015
Green Summer Camps have been held by Greens of Turkey for a long time. After a brief break between 2013 and 2014, this year Green Thought Association organized the Green Summer Camp.
Green Summer Camps are organized to introduce and promote the green politics and the actors, to create a medium to discuss current issues from a green perspective, to introduce ongoing and upcoming campaigns, events of Greens, to extend the outreach of Greens, to meet and welcome new members, activists and volunteers.
Green Summer Camp hosted 70 people. Among these people there were both first comers and experienced members. Demographics of the participants were very varied, the age range was very wide. Participants came from various cities like İstanbul, İzmir, Muğla, Çanakkale, Tekirdağ, Ankara, some participants came all the way from East of Turkey like Ağrı, Adana, Mersin.