This month James met with Kerim Balci to talk about all that mattered for a Turkish Journalist & Intellectual and the the Chairman of Centre for Intercultural Dialogue Studies.

  Can you tell us a bit about yourselves?

I am a professional journalist writing columns for the second largest circulating daily newspaper in Turkey - Zaman. I also give comments to national TV programmes about Middle Eastern issues. I previously worked in Jerusalem for 8 years before I moved to London which was two years ago. I am also the head of Centre for Intercultural Dialogue Studies.

  What career path did you take to get where you are now?

I originally studied physics, but afterwards I moved into Political Science. I studied at the Bosporus University in Turkey. The Political Science department was also shared with International Relations so I became involved in many fields of knowledge. I started working in advertising but later I was approached from Zaman to become a correspondent in Jerusalem, running around chasing the news. However later on I moved on and became a columnist and now they are running after me!

My area of expertise circles around Israeli/Palestine relations and the Middle East issues. But in London, this takes up about 5% of my time.

  What are you doing in London now?

I am the head of Centre for Intercultural Dialogue Studies. We are a small group of networks. We are networking with around 42 inter-faith dialogue organisations around Europe. We are promoting inter-faith dialogue and we are bringing organisations new ideas. One of these includes the Whirling Dervishes - Whispers of Love event organised by the Dialogue Society being shown at the Hackney Empire this month.

We also take out the bureaucratic issues so that the organisations only have to contend with reaching the public. It is an umbrella organisation working with a few smaller groups.

  Tell us a bit more about the Centre for Intercultural Dialogue Studies?

Last year I realised that several organisations need help engaging in interfaith dialogue and so I established the Centre for Intercultural Dialogue Studies as an umbrella organisation liaising with other charities, organisations and companies. My organisation works with the same philosophy as the Dialogue Society, the issue of engaging in interfaith intercultural dialogue is quite an old established tradition among the Turkish. The ottoman experience shows that even in the 16th century our ancestors established a country with a society of pluralism. Ottoman society was based on an understanding that your nationality, ethnicity and religiosity would not be an issue within the public state.

For example, during the Genocide of the Jewish within the Second World War there were only two countries that were receptive of the fleeing, one was Turkey and the other was the United States. I am not saying that the Turkish people are genealogically good, but probably because of the fact that the Turkish were nomads they used to travel and so they needed the mercy of the hosts of these countries so for them to be accepted as strangers was very important. So when they settled down they became more receptive to allow others to settle down in their lands. This is our tradition.

In Israel, I realised that Jews and Palestinians were not talking to each other. I had friends from Jerusalem on the Jewish side living 30 years in the country but never crossing to the Arab side, and vice versus. I noticed that the Arabs would like the cinema from the Jewish side and the Jewish would love the Humus from the Arabic side. I realised that I could bring those people together, to start talking, a dialogue, it took me about 8 years. I found that there were many people taking part within interfaith dialogue. After the war I felt my work would be quite weak so I moved to Europe to carry out the same work.

  When writing, where does your inspiration come from?

Two things I write about, these are Israeli/ Palestinian relations and Islam, the challenges in this modern world Islam faces. It remains within a political and philosophical level.

My inspiration comes with the fact that I like to mix art with politics. My writing style in Turkish I think gives me the love for writing. People in Turkey do not read a lot, however if they do follow a columnist, they have built a sensual relationship or they must enjoy their style of writing.

People come together and read my column, they sometimes write back to me, where some haven't quite established my point and others who have understood me very well.

I usually write on things that people do not like to read. Things like Islam and violence, these are hard issues they are sensitive, even reading them, you will feel somehow disturbed. It takes a lot of courage to write about these sorts of things, I am still young and will follow this until I am old and then I will say - I need a rest!

  What do you think of the Pakistani situation right now and Turkey's effort towards the disastrous situation?

One of my recent articles I wrote about Pakistan, it is titled "I am Pakistan". Most of the Turkish people may be happy that Turkey is doing quite a lot helping with the victims of the earthquake but I am unhappy with the results. But I am never happy with the results, of anything; I always think we can do better.

In most of these cases -we had the experience [of earthquakes] in 1999 - the sentiment of the people to help continues for 3 months. After this, people forget about the calamity but the victims still need help for about 5 years on. Children need psychological support for years to deal with the trauma of such disasters. I hope Turkish people will continue to help, not only financially but within their prayers too.

More information about the CIDS can be found at www.DialogueStudies.org