Our guests
Numerous dignitaries of all nationalities and beliefs have been the honoured guests of the Council of Europe. These men and women, often instrumental in the implementation of political, social and cultural initiatives, illustrate the dynamism and values which, since the 1950s, have governed the work of the Council of Europe
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Bülent Ecevit [1925 - 2006]
Prime Minister of Turkey
10 May 1979
Our
membership in the Council has served as a compass that
helped to prevent us from losing our barings
His speech:
...The main safeguard of democracy
in Turkey as in any other democratic country is inevitably
the people's attachment to democracy and freedom. But there
had been times where our membership in the Council has
served as a compass that helped to prevent us from losing
our barings. Particularly during the last three decades
Turkey has been passing through a period of rapid but at the
same time rather disorderly and unbalanced economic
development. More recently, the constraints that came with
the World economic crisis of the seventies, has had certain
shock effects on the economy and the society.
Then, of course, there has been this great migration of the
unemployed and the underemployed, particularly from rural
areas and from the neglected parts of Turkey, to the highly
developed countries of the West. People were transplanted
over night from the distant villages of Anatolia, from
villages cut off from the rest of the world, to the highly
industrialised and sophisticated centres of the Western
world. While they did not loose much time in adapting
themselves to these new and completely different
surroundings and ways of life and culture, they maintained
close ties with their villages and towns in Turkey...