Prof Dr Tuna Taner Celal Bayar University Rector 650 Years Symposium / 4 June 2002
Distinguished guests, Beautiful People of the World Turks, Excited, sincere, humorous and positive people Rumeli Turks, I greet you all with respect and love. Organized to commemorate the 650th Anniversary of the Turks’ transition to Rumelia, this cultural program is actually a movement that we all need to evaluate well in all aspects and to utilize as an important element of continuity and development. I saw in the celebration protocol that there were some very important elements that I personally participated in in the organization of this program.
The first of these is the desire to keep the Rumelian culture alive in the Turkish existence and to keep it alive at all times as an important dimension of the Turkish existence. Secondly, groups with very different approaches have reached a will to consent to the unity of emotion, thought and action on such a common goal with sacrifice and will and to attribute the results to the Son of Fatih. These two elements, among other things, are two aspects that I think we’d all agree with to a large extent. Rumelian people, Rumelian Turkish people, with their multidimensional culture and multidimensional extensions, are the most developed examples of the human type that the world imagines in the future.
We need to announce this to the whole world with care, interest and power, without relying on humility. We must teach those who do not know. We need to keep this feature alive in Turkey, develop it and show it to the world. It is very interesting that the Rumelian culture is not a very categorical culture. However, it is a culture that mutually acquired the love, respect, trust and loyalty of the Turks, with its humanity, its constructiveness and its characteristics of being the locomotive of the Turkish existence and participating in the Turkish existence from every point of view.
Prof Dr Tuna Taner, Rector of Celal Bayar University, 650 Years Symposium, 4 June 2002