Turkey is a Balkan country not only for its geographical location, but also for historical and socio-cultural aspects, because of its deep and intensive his-torical and socio-cultural connections with the Balkan nations. The waves of migrations from the Balkans to Turkey have created approximately 7 million Balkan origin Turkish citizens such as Bosniaks, Albanians, Pomaks, Torbeshes and Balkan Turks in the present Turkey. These Balkan origin peo-ple of Turkey still have relations with their relatives - approximately 9.5 mil-lion Turkic and Muslim people - who live in the Balkan countries.
Due to deep historical and socio-cultural connections and existing inten-sive economic and political relations, the Balkans is a very important region for Turkey. This region is a gate to Europe for Turkey. The connecting roads between Turkey and European countries cross over this region. Existence of peaceful and stable conditions in the Balkans is very important for both Turkey's security and the continuity of economic and political relations with Europe. For this reason, since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Turkish foreign policy has been aimed and has supported building peaceful stable condition in the region and always tried to cooperate with the other Balkan countries for this purpose.
The 1990s was a period during which the Cold War ended and socialist regimes collapsed. In this period, the Balkan countries and communities came into a radical transformation and changing process. New states were founded after the bloody collapse and disintegration of Socialist Yugoslavia. These rad-ical developments and changes affected relations deeply among the states and caused new problems in the Balkan region.
Moreover, another important development was the beginning of the Balkan countries' integration process into the European Union after the regime changes. Slovenia in 2004, Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 joined the European Union. Croatia and Turkey are two Balkan countries which have been main-taining full membership negotiations with the European Union since October 2005. Relations among the European Union and Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have been maintained with-in the context of Stabilization and Association Agreements. On the other hand, Greece, as a European Union member since 1981, has experiences for sharing with the other Balkan countries about the European Union.
All these radical changes and transformation processes have brought new economic, political, social and cultural issues in the Balkan agenda. Definitely, the most destructive and painful problem in the Balkan lands was wars that erupted in the 1990s. Painful memoirs of the wars are still alive and compli-cate problems in the region. Therefore, building peace, democracy and stabil-ity is still the most important issue for the Balkan states and nations.
For all these reasons, we need and aim to get correct and objective infor-mation about Balkans, overcome false prejudiced opinions among the Balkan nations, develop a strategic vision toward the region, contribute to building peace, democracy and stability in the region, and especially establish intensive communication and interaction among the Balkan nation.
In order to satisfy these needs and reach the aims, "International Balkans Congress" under the main theme of "Interaction among the Balkan Nations" was organized by the cooperation of Tekirdağ Governorship, East-West Thrace Municipal Union and TASAM (Turkish-Asian Center for Strategic Studies). Venue chosen for the Congress in Tekirdağ, demographically and geographically as intersection between the Balkans and Anatolia, made it more effective and meaningful.
Academicians, statesmen, diplomatic representatives and many Balkan NGOs from 11 countries participated in the Congress.
A book composed of papers presented in the Congress will be published after the Congress for registration of the information, data and evaluations of the Congress for record and sent to relevant institutions and persons. Publishing a book of the Congress will make contributions of the participants more meaningful.
As a result of the Congress, a consensus emerged on the following topics:
- To spend collective effort in order to improve and establish permanent peace, democracy and stability in the Balkans.
- To develop cooperation among the Balkan countries and nations on economic, political and cultural areas.
- To support and develop multicultural life in the Balkans.
- To protect and develop common historical and cultural heritages in the Balkans which is one of the regions that needs specially high political and socio-cultural tolerance.
- To develop joint projects for living together on the basis of respect to each other in the Balkans; against radical political projects which oppress and exclude the others and result in discriminations and conflicts among the Balkan nations.
- To support solution of conflicts and problems through peaceful meth-ods in the Balkans.
- To establish a robust and transparent communication network, in order to prevent and rectify false, destructive and prejudiced opinions deriving from various reasons among the Balkan nations.
- To establish a "civil society forum" which will be a collective ground for further improving existing fields of cooperation, dialogue and communi-cation channels among the Balkan countries.
- To develop dialogue among existing private and/or official think-tank organizations in the region.
- To support integration process of the Balkan countries into the European Union, and for this purpose, to create and conduct collective endeavors.
- To conduct collective works, and spend efforts with the aim of over-coming remaining problems which have emerged during the transformation process from socialist one-party regimes to multi-party democracies and market economy.
- To spend maximum efforts with the aim of supporting and facilitat-ing the return of refugees, displaced by the wars and conflicts that have bro-ken out during the transformation process in the Balkans.
- To determine collective working areas for improving economic con-ditions and affluence among the Balkan nations.
- Different ideas and recommendations were presented to the Congress about controversial and problematic issues and problems still unresolved in the region such as Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia and a con-structive ground emerged for discussion and communication among represen-tatives from relevant countries during the Congress. For this reason, such dia-logue should be encouraged and maintained.
- Endeavours should be directed to keep alive and strengthen Turkey's historical and cultural relations with the Balkan countries and nations through sophisticated activities and projects.
- To organize and continue the process of International Balkan Congresses in the future under different and time-related actual subtitles.
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