Cultural dialogue and exchange preempt conflict and nurture peace and hope.

Diversity is the beginning, the obvious. The challenge is to compose bridging cross-cultural ‘beats of identities’. Culture, as a universal language is numbered among the best vectors for peace making.

Culture of humanity has a full meaning and completion only when all the diverse specific cultures have an echo, if not an existence in the great orchestra of world cultures. Culture escapes the elusiveness it is often associated, when it is perceived in its specific variants.

Only when the diversity from within, among all cultures is acknowledged, only then are we able to perceive, even approximately the differences within ourselves, we are also disposed to tolerance. Only when individuals are willing to acknowledge all the components of their identity, can they be at peace with themselves and others. Similarly, only when humanity acknowledges the different facets of its representation, the different cultures within itself, can it be in harmony, even only approximately.

Culture is a loose way of identification, thus it allows passages of identities, opening and tolerance. Yet the preservation and promotion of minority cultures may contribute in two manners to world peace and balance:

» The trans-generational transmission of culture within a Diaspora community enhances harmony within that group and subsequently among the host communities. History, be it personal or collective, is never one continuous linear history, for any society in the world. History, as a social science, bears not enough documents to compose a continuous representation of past reality. Customarily, Nations-States have the means to encourage research that may fill the historical gaps and cement bits of identities in so far as history is one significant component of identity. Meaning exists only when reality is sliced in temporality.

» For the sake of not ending up in a bipolar world, Kurds in Europe, as an oppressed minority community, may contribute to the cementation of a European identity in search of itself. By their historical determination for freedom, they may re-assemble the divided majorities within Europe, since the old generations of Europeans who had to strive for freedom and launched the European Union for the sake of peace first and foremost, are only a few. This determination for peace and freedom is emanating from European past, but from Kurdish present. For this reason, young Kurds may contribute to cohesion and understanding and peace among young Europeans.

Dr. Sivan Perwer