We say hello to the year 2018 and on this last day of the year, as the YPIDA Family, we hope that all humanity will be able to do the accounting for each year we spend.
In this context, we wanted to share important events that have affected our lives from our own perspective in the past year and to share with you what we did in 2017.
- Trump was elected president, we were immediately influenced and started to see various movements in the Arabs and of course North Korea,
- Brexit took place.
- The Qatar crisis broke out. Under the leadership of Saudi Arabia, a group of Arab countries imposed an embargo on Qatar,
- There was a military coup in Turkey,
- We heard a lot more about the “proxy wars” that we knew about for a long term,
- The war in Syria continued. Russia emerged stronger from this process. Finally, the Mediterranean has become a region as they want,
- The war continued between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Yemen.
- Of course China did not stop growing. Expected to be the world’s largest economy before it began to be called.
- We have witnessed terrors in the cities, at the concerts, at the XMas markets with the trucks.
- We started hearing about “BitCoin” more often.
- We started to see a process of globalization and decentralization. Parallel to this, we have witnessed the rise of nationalist trends.
- We witnessed a massive Muslim massacre in Myanmar
- The Catalans still want independence, but for the first time they have come to such a serious dimension and have seen various politicians arrested. The solution is unknown, but we have seen that freedom has a limit in Europe as well.
- North Korea has made dozens of bomb tests. The latest figures say the fuze is about 4700km high and it can hit Washington DC.
- We watched Saudi Arabia take all the royal family in custody. The cards have been redistributed in this area.
- Germany still has no coalition,
- Gun sales increased.
- Trump made the anticipation and proclaimed Jerusalem as the capital.
- Distinguished scientists and artists passed away.
Unfortunately we see that in 2017 there are no good things as the previous years. We strongly wish that we will have more peace and less conflict in 2018.
As YPIDA Family, we have continued to make a full-fledged tradition in order to make the world a better place this year, as it has been for 9 years.
We tried to give young people more mobility opportunities. We continued to train young people on various topics. We continued to encourage young people to learn from other cultures. We continued to work towards young people becoming world citizens.
In this context,
- Social Innovation – Young Entrepreneurship Traning, Istanbul, 26 participants from 11 countries,
- Connectors Project, Hebron, Jerusalem, 33 participants from 12 countries,
- Social Inclusion of Migrants Project, Izmir, 10 countries, 33 participants
- We continued to contribute to world peace by going again to Seoul.
- We were involved in the issue of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy.
- We continued to establish new partnerships.
We want to open a parenthesis, the most special event for us in 2017 was the project we had organized on Alternative Conflict Resolution in Palestine. We believe that in the nearest time we will celebrate our 10th anniversary with other projects in those impressive lands.
We are excited that we are going to celebrate our 10th anniversary; on the other hand we wish that the sad events we share above end.
“We wish the New Year to bring health, happiness, peace, success, to all of us.”
Onur Oguz Dellal
Founding Director
APIDA e.V. | Berlin 