By Burak Sayin
Photos by Timmy H.M. Shen, Thana Faroq, Gabriel d’Alincourt
In 2015, almost 2 million refugees came to Europe with the hope of safe haven. European Union is struggling to respond to the refugee crisis as the problems regarding cultural interrogation, values and identity emerge.
“When you have a dictatorship for so many years, like in Libya, that destroys all social fabric, and this system falls apart through military intervention or revolution, then people go back to the only identity they can understand in this vacuum. Tribe, religion, local community, just a neighborhood,” says Aljoz Peterle, Member of the European Parliament, Former Prime Minister of Slovenia.
There is enormous responsibility to the international community according to Peterle. However, there is core dilemma in this conversation. “Maybe it was better to keep Gaddafi longer,” he says.
“You can’t import democracy by military means,” says Claudia Roth, Vice President of Bundestag. According the Roth, it takes time to construct institutions in democracies. It takes about 27 years to get rid of corruption and 36 years to form good governance according to World Bank. Roth emphasized that what followed military intervention was important. She continued, “There was no idea what would happen after the military intervention and it was a terrible mistake”.
“Values are about the visionary people and not about the democracy. Minority fights for the values and then majority becomes aware of the importance of the values. People, who fight for the democracy are usually in minority,” says Jerzy Pomianowski, Executive Director of European Endowment for Democracy.
