The Conference on Kayseri will take place in İstanbul

The conference on “Social, Cultural and Economic History of Kayseri and the Region”, which was initially planned to take place in Kayseri on October 18-19, is moved to İstanbul due to the interference of the Kayseri Governorship in holding the conference in Kayseri.

The conference on “Social, Cultural and Economic History of Kayseri and the Region”, will be held in Istanbul at the Hrant Dink Foundation Anarad Hığutyun Building, Havak Hall. The conference will be webcasted live on the website of the Foundation in Turkish and English, for those who would like to follow the conference and participate via their questions and comments from Kayseri and other cities in Turkey or abroad.

Unfortunately, the request to have a face to face visit to the governorship of Kayseri to inform about the conference remained unanswered for weeks, and then the governorship called to inform that holding the conference in Kayseri was not appropriate. Our demand for the justification afterwards and re-evaluation unfortunately remained unanswered as well.

The Hrant Dink Foundation was established in 2007 after the assassination of Hrant Dink to continue his dreams, legacy, language and heart. Encouraging dialogue, peace and the culture of empathy has been the main principles of the Foundation and during these 12 years the Foundation has held many workshops and international conferences on culture, history, economy, international relations, education and human rights and published reports regarding their outcome both in Turkish and English.

The international conference series contributed to a detailed understanding of the changing social, economic, politic and cultural structure of various cities of Turkey during the 19th and 20th century, has allowed the recent academic researches to be heard internationally. The series have become one of the international examples for its scientific approach and quality. In the past years, the conference series were organized on Adana, Diyarbakır, Mardin, Van and Izmir.

While deciding this year’s city, our main aim was to highlight the multicultural and rich history of Kayseri with an international and prestigious conference and to share our detailed research and publication on the cultural heritage of Kayseri prepared in 2016 with the support of European Union and the Ministry of EU Affairs (Turkey).

https://hrantdink.org/attachments/article/192/Kayseri-with-its-Armenian-and-Greek-Cultural-Heritage.pdf

The international scientific committee of the conference has selected the papers of 27 scientists from various cities of Turkey as well as from America, France, Greece and Armenia and invited them to Kayseri to present their research. Moreover, a cultural heritage tour of Kayseri was planned to take place after the conference for the conference participants to witness the rich history of Kayseri first hand.

Yet, the conference has to be moved to İstanbul due to the unfortunate interference of the Kayseri Governorship in holding the conference in Kayseri. We hope Kayseri will be able to host this and many similar academic meetings in the near future and the obstacles for Kayseri and other cities of Turkey to talk, to present and to own its history and the richness of its culture will be eliminated.