On June 24-29, 2014, the island of Heybeliada offshore Istanbul hosted the 4th International Neighborhood Symposium organized by the Center for International and European Studies of Kadir Has University, Istanbul, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, Washington DC, MGIMO European Studies Institute, Moscow, and International Institute for Peace, Vienna. Conducted under the motto “Exploring the Challenges of Political and Social Change in the Eastern Neighborhood and the Mediterranean South”, the event gathered young foreign affairs experts and scholars from Russia represented by RIAC Program Assistant Anna Kuzmina, the United States, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Palestine, Israel, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and other countries.
On June 24-29, 2014, the island of Heybeliada offshore Istanbul hosted the 4th International Neighborhood Symposium organized by the Center for International and European Studies of Kadir Has University, Istanbul, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, Washington DC, MGIMO European Studies Institute, Moscow, and International Institute for Peace, Vienna.
Conducted under the motto “Exploring the Challenges of Political and Social Change in the Eastern Neighborhood and the Mediterranean South”, the event gathered young foreign affairs experts and scholars from Russia represented by RIAC Program Assistant Anna Kuzmina, the United States, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Palestine, Israel, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and other countries.
Opened by Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, Director of the Center for International and European Studies, the event was composed of two parts, the first presenting a series of plenary sessions on issues from Ukraine crisis to the Middle East settlement other problems like corruption in Iran and socially responsible business in Turkey.
The speakers' list included Sergey Konoplyov, Director of Harvard's Black Sea Regional Security Program; Adam Balcer, Program Director "The EU and the New Global Contract" at DemosEUROPA - Centre for European Strategy, Warsaw University; Eka Tshekelashvili, Georgian ex-foreign minister, President of Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies; Taras Mikhalnyuk, Director of Open Ukraine Foundation; et al.
On several occasions, the speakers touched upon Russia-related regional issues, some of them hardly trying to offer an unbiased assessment of the current situation, while many participants frequently underlined that the Russian analytical presence at the symposium was too scarce to have a full picture.
For part two of the symposium, the participants were split into several groups for a series of workshops moderated by Professor Benjamin Broome of Arizona State University and devoted to practices for building an effective dialogue, as well as identification, classification, analysis and solution of regional problems.
The event was crowned by presentation of joint projects aimed to lower the regional conflict potential, with those on the regional culinary festival, the Internet platform for assisting cooperative initiatives in regional research, as well as many others praised by the jury.
