Below is the full text of the speech delivered by DÜNYA-MER President Prof. Dr. Semih Koray at the opening meeting. Video recording will be published soon.

Historical Interaction and Cooperation

DÜNYA-MER, in cooperation with the People’s Republic of China’s Global Civilization Initiative, aims to research and place at humanity’s service: historical interaction and cooperation among world civilizations, the role of the “Rising Asian Civilization” in humanity’s common future, the Global Civilizations Initiative, National Democratic Revolutions and the processes of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the contributions of the Turkish and Chinese revolutions and contemporary Türkiye and China to humanity’s common future.

Humanity’s Common Treasure

The common denominator of all civilizations is that each, within its unique circumstances, has made creative contributions to humanity’s development by effectively unleashing human potential.

This accumulation, encompassing all of life — primarily science, art, philosophy, culture, public order and social relations — constitutes humanity’s richest common treasure today.

Throughout history, every civilization, after reaching its peak, has begun to decline and form a shell. The place where a system in decline remains strongest is its own center. For this reason, history has not yet witnessed a hardened shell being broken from within the declining civilization’s own center.

The Decline of the Atlantic System

The banner of civilization has always been taken over by societies that came from behind but had absorbed the contributions of the old civilization’s ascending period and possessed the energy to build a higher future.

Throughout history, the geography of civilizational centers has changed according to this rule. Today as well, the decline of the Atlantic system is accompanied by the rise of a new civilization from Asia.

Change in civilizational geography does not always lead to a radical change in social system. Sometimes the old social system continues with some renewals. Civilizations that lead to a new social system — that is, those that are the product of a revolutionary leap — represent the most important advances in humanity’s development.

The Civilization Rising from Asia

Such a revolutionary leap underlies the new civilization rising from Asia today. Its driving force is constituted by the “national democratic revolutions” in the developing world, along with the process of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” of the People’s Republic of China, which is in a pioneering position in this respect.

It is precisely for this reason that the new civilization carries through “sharing instead of selfishness”, “winning together instead of winner-takes-all”, “equal and just relations instead of hegemony”, “the superior ethics of the new human instead of decay”.

These principles constitute the main pillars for establishing what Kemal Atatürk called “the social order befitting humanity” — equivalently, what the Communist Party of China constantly refers to as “the community of common destiny for humanity”.

Oppressed Nations Have Rich Diversity

Building humanity’s community of common destiny is the greatest goal history has witnessed to date. To reach this goal, drawing upon all past achievements of humanity to develop “the culture of common living among peoples” is indispensable.

Today, uniformity and homogeneity are characteristic of the imperialist system. The oppressed nations, which have succeeded in producing a strong developing world from within themselves, possess rich diversity. But transforming this diversity into a real source of wealth becomes possible only by using differences as building blocks of a new and common synthesis of living culture at a higher level.

The past contains not only achievements but also a heap of scrap that constitutes a hindrance for humanity. Today, communication possibilities that unite the globe as a whole are unfortunately being used mostly to spread falsehoods that originate from this scrap heap and aim at decaying the essence of humans.