Russian and Turkish Scientists Discuss How to Draw a Border between Freedom of Self-Expression and Respect to Sacred Values
The round-table conference “Respect to Sacred: between Terrorism and Freedom of Speech,” which embraced Russia’s and Turkey’s experts in the areas of history, political science, international relations and law, took place in Saint-Petersburg State University.
While opening the meeting, the Dean of the School of International Relations, SPbSU, Irina Nikolayevna Novikova, emphasized, that there is a lot of common in the history of Russia and Turkey, which creates a basis for interaction in many areas, including the issues concerning the respect to sacred values.
The problem of the “respect to sacred” is directly connected to that fact, that in the modern society the border between the “violation of feelings” and the “freedom of self-expression” is vanishing. Within this framework, the professor of the Suleyman Shakh University (Istanbul) Dr. Adnan Aslan claimed that without the respect to values that are sacred for every religion there will not be peace, because, in his view the God created all people so different to teach them to co-exist peacefully with each other.
According to the Associate Professor Suleyman Shakh, University Ugur Comechoglu, the category of “sacred” should be expanded, so that it could refer not only to Abrahamic religions, but also include Hinduism, Shintoism and Animism, because every religion is an experience, accumulated by people.
The Turkish and Russian scientists have come to a commonly shared understanding that there is a necessity to create the legal platform in the sphere of relations between secular and religious. The freedom of belief is available only to the people in a law-bound state with transparent laws.
Information:
The conference was organized by the Saint-Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg Association of International Cooperation and Saint-Petersburg Society of friendship with Turkey from the Russian side and Russian-Turkish Cultural Centre in Saint Petersburg, Institute of Russian Researches attached to the Turkish-Russian fond of culture in Istanbul, the Ipek University in Ankara and Suleyman Shakh University in Istanbul - on the part of Turkey.