This month Sule Cetin met with Erel Korusoy & Mehmet Karamanoglu, to talk about TCEA's ambitions, Engineering students in the UK and global warming.

  Can you tell us a bit about yourselves?

Erel: I am the chairman of the TCEA for this term. My personal background is in Computing, which I graduated in. I worked in the industry for about 15 years. Predominantly it has been in the IT Sector; recently I have changed my career to become an ISO consultant helping companies achieve ISO Standard Accreditation. During my IT career, I have worked in all aspects of IT from Software Engineering to Hardware, as well as progressing through the ranks of IT Management and Directing.

  How did TCEA start? Why do you do this?

Erel: Its main purpose is to try and bring together all the Turkish Engineers and to help them assimilate their knowledge. Also, trying to bring some form of cultural identity, at least to preserve it. There were fears that in time, people were almost losing their identity in terms of being Turkish, or they were finding it difficult to mix with other engineering disciplines and this was brought as an umbrella organisation under more of a technical bias. Why do we do this? TCEA is trying to give something back to the society in a number of different ways. One of the things we have done in the past was to collect some medical equipment that was no longer usable. They were the kind of equipment that needed fixing. We acquired them at low cost and at our own expense. Our members have repaired them, brought them back into full use and ship them over to Cyprus, to be used in hospitals. We also donated some books and money through our own events. We have also noticed as engineers that there is an unfortunate situation among the Turkish pupils in that they tend to be largely under achievers at schools. In order to promote engineering, we have actually attended quite a number of schools. We attend talking to as many students and parents as we can to try and give them an idea of what engineering is about.

  TCEA has many good ambitions on its agenda, which one is most emphasis put on?

Erel: We don't necessary distinguish one from the other. If we can see an opportunity which we can involve in to help out than we will do that. We have supported the schools in terms of trying to introduce engineering but the resources are fairly limited so the impact we have made has also been limited accordingly. That is also why we tried to help out in terms of repairing equipment.

Mehmet: There is another aspect that the association was good at and that was to run series of radio broadcasts through the London Turkish Radio. It was a regular event, which lasted two years. Every week we used to have a member talking about the particular aspect of engineering. We used to get people calling the show about their IT problems.

  What kind of feedback did you get from the students you gave advice to for further engineering?

Mehmet: There are two groups actually. Those that are born and attended a school in the UK and those that came in following a university education in Turkey/Cyprus. A lot of the people in the latter group want to do Masters program. Funding is another issue for them. We were able to successfully generate some funds through the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) and run training sessions at Middlesex University in the upper Lea Valley. I remember about 15 or so students graduated with MSc in IT Networks. There are some funding opportunities for businesses as well. We try and advice those interested about which departments give funding for particular courses and how they qualify.

  Do you have any co-operation with other engineering or Turkish community organisations? Is TCEA a member of KONSEY?

Mehmet: We are not allowed by our constitution to be a member of politically aligned organisations or umbrellas, even tough we do support what KONSEY does on a personal level, we do not bar any members to engage in those activities.

What are your views about the Turkish speaking engineers in the UK?

Erel: I think the immediate word 'Isolated' comes to my mind. I find quite a lot of them are in some form of management or services positions. As social status, they may have a very little network of friends or family around them and that is it. This is why TCEA was originally was founded.

Mehmet: I believe we don't have enough engineers. Our society as a whole feels intimidated in the UK. They have two issues, language barrier and financial barrier. As a result, children are not achieving as well as they should.

  You have an ‘Environment News’ link at TCEA site, do you believe Global Warming will affect the politics/economics of the future?

Erel: I think it is affecting already. I visit a lot of companies and already there is a lot of emphasis on the environmental awareness, not least because current government is trying to make UK one of the leading environmental aware countries in Europe.

Mehmet: What I think what is becoming more environmental issue is the sustainability of the economy, communities, etc. I think that is going to be quite important to think in a wider sense than just the environment. Even in the university we have got sustainability plans that we can keep the business going, depending on the climate that we operate in. That applies to governments, politics and businesses.

  Any thing else you would like to say to our readers?

We would like to encourage as many of your readers as possible to contact us if they are interested in becoming a member. We need more members to keep this organisation going.