1. 67CZECH LEADERS III/201566
DIPLOMATIC FORUMDIPLOMATIC FORUM
with H.E. Ahmet Necati Bigalı,
Ambassador of Turkey
FRYDAY DIPLOMATIC FORUM
FRYDAY Diplomatic Forum was held with
his Excellence ambassador of the Turkish
Republic in the Czech Republic – H.E. Ahmet
Necati Bigali. The Forum was supported
by the Anglo-American University, Czech
Leaders Magazine, Prague TV and FRYDAY.
Even though the main topic of the event
was “Syria, Iraq and the role of Turkey in the
region”, many other questions were raised
such as cooperation between Turkey and
member states of the EU in the refugee-crisis
problematic.
Hall of the Anglo-American University was full
of interested guests, mostly businessmen and
International Affairs PhD students. Hot debate
with smart questions and no less intelligent
and wise answers came across the relevance
of this political issue.
H.E. Bigali’ speech was impressive and
brought a lot of things for reconsidering.
He had open a new perspective of mutual
relations between the Turkish Republic and
the European Union, and the Czech Republic
in particular. His Excellence had opened the
forum with the description of the current
situation in the political area, mentioning
necessity of the cooperation between the
states in the fight against terrorism and its
derivates, violation of human rights and the
refugee crisis. He talked about the work,
which has been done, and which should be
done in the nearest future – as to advance
the democratic interests, to enforce the law
in order to keep the respect for the universal
values. His Excellence has also touched in
his speech the numbers of the refugees in
the territory of the Turkish Republic, which is
enormous – about 2,5 millions of Syrians are
Photo by: Ekaterina Gritt and Hans Weber
located Turkey. He talked about the triangle
of neighbors in the hot spot resolving the
situation – cooperation of the Lebanon,
Jordan and Turkey. And also - about the
dangerous neighborhood with the Syria and
Iraq. H.E Ahmet Necati Bigali talked about
given amount of money from the budget of
Turkey in order to accommodate and support
the sufferers. This amount is close to 2 billion
United States Dollars. It was also stressed that
those countries are being unintentionally
transit-routes for the refugees on the way to
Europe. The speech of the ambassador was
supplemented by Mrs. Pelin Ayan Musil, PhD,
Faculty Member and Chair, Department of
Politics School of International Relations and
Diplomacy in Anglo-American University. She
brought statistics and the opinion from the
public survey of the Turkish society, according
to which 56 percent of respondents thinks
that Syrian policy of the Turkish government
is not successful.
The contribution of the Czech Republic in
numbers was presented by Martin Kaveda,
Head of the Law School in the Anglo-
American University. He mentioned that,
apart from the humanitarian support, Czech
republic also provided financial support to
the Turkish government.
Diplomatic forum was prolonged for more
than two hours without a break. However,
there was a time for networking, which made
this forum more interesting and in some
point – intimate.
Hans Weber, Managing Director, FRYDAY Prague
Martin Kavena, LL.B, B.C.L., Chamber of Deputies,
Parliament of the Czech Republic
H.E. Ahmet Necati Bigalı, Ambassador of Turkey
Rikkert Niewold, Consultant, De Vere Group JUDr. Světlana Patáková Boučková
From left: Rikkert Niewold, Consultant, De Vere
Group and Fethi Etem, First Counsellor at the
Turkish Embassy in the Czech Republic