The ESOMAR qualitative congres is in Istanbul this year. Good choice. One of the good things in Istanbul is that the better hotels provide free wireless internet. I haven’t had that in any place up to now. The second good thing is that they pour out an excellent tea, brewed in the English way.
The congress started with a musician as a key note ’speaker’. It was Tuluyhan Ugurlu . The idea of having a concert in stead of a speach was brilliant. Tuluyhan played piano and was accompanied by a Turkish flute that I really loved. The intersting part however, was that he had a slideshow running while playing. The slideshow gave an impression of Anatolian history since the Hittites. For my ears – and some of my fellow Dutch – this felt like utter propaganda. All of the ancient tribes that inabited Anatlolia where wonderful, glorious and open minded. All of them where in favour of acknowledging women rights and respected all faiths. And the last and glorious leader was Attatürk. To give you an impression of his playing:A concert played
The interesting part was that I guess Tuluyhan did not at all intent to do this, he probably wanted to say that we all should respect women rights and different faiths and that he loved the country he is living in. Looking at his web site I think he wanted to stress the universal aspect of life, by going back so long in history.
So what we encountered was a different believe system. Ironically the ESOMAR president, Frits Spangenberg, just mentionned another aspect of the Turkish believe system: YouTube is blocked in Turkey to prevent unpatriottic video’s to be posted.
Interesting to see how strong these believe systems are, and how difficult it is to communicate between two systems. It shows quite clearly when the cleft is so huge. But in a more subtle way there are so many diffences in those systems that you could ask yourself: do we really communicate? Or is it more often an exchange of words.
Tags: communication