Speaker 1: Hello everyone and welcome to the Rumi Forum Luncheon series. Today we have as our special guest Dr. Karina Korostelina who is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University and a Fellow of the European Research Centre of Migration and Ethnic Relations. She is a leading experts on identity-based conflicts, ethnic conflicts, the relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim populations, conflict resolution and peace building. Her recent interests include the study of civilian devastation, the processes of politicization of history and role of history education in conflict and post-conflict societies. She has been a Fulbright New Century Scholar, has participated in the Regional Scholar Exchange Program administered by the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC and in the CRC Nationalism session at the Curriculum Resource Center of the Central European University. And today Karina will be speaking on the topic “Fethullah Gulen’s Contribution to the Field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution” and I welcome her today to the Rumi Forum. Thank you very much Karina.
Speaker 2: Thank you and thank you everyone to coming today, it is probably one of the best [???] so I really appreciate that you [???] this wonderful [???] sitting here and when you just spoke, I was asked why I become interested in Gulen movement and I am really [???] psychologist, social psychologist and I have two PhD, one in general psychology, one in social psychology and I study social identity mostly and then I was thinking on some approaches to conflict resolution from point of view of non-western cultures, because I am originally from [???] we are a neighbor [???] to Turkey and I did a lot of [???]. I was looking for some interesting theories, which can contribute and change somehow western approaches to conflict resolution and Gulen came across because it was very articulate, very interesting even he is not a social scientist but his ideas were very strongly resonating [???] and conflict resolution and at that time I had become involved I have participated in several conferences, already published several papers on Gulen and conflict resolution and today I will speak generally about how we can see this fusion between conflict resolution theory is developed in western social sciences and how Gulen can contribute to all deep understanding of such processes and first of all Gulen speaks very strongly about importance of peace and conflict resolution, he is not using conflict resolution notion, but he is speaking about importance of positive perceptions between Muslim and non-muslin population. He told in 2004 and one of his articles today’s more than anything else our society is need of tolerance and this is the idea which go in for all his [???] all his ideas. But he also speaks and for us it is important because conflict resolution always starts with conflict analysis and he speaks a lot about what are the problems, what are impediments for peace? What type of problems we can identify in relations between Muslim and non-Muslim population and first of all he is speaking about increasing the [???] in the perceptions of [???].