During his visit to Turkey, Prime Minister Edi Rama was conferred a “Honoris Causa” degree by the ITY university, one of the best-known universities of Turkey.
In his speech at the ceremony held in his honor, the Prime Minister said that bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the Balkans, countries altogether have an historic opportunity to give peace a specific value. The Prime Minister highlighted the special Turkish-Albanian relationship as an irreplaceable asset in this regard.
Prime Minister Edi Rama praised among other things that civilization needs more than ever the alliance of minds and hearts united for a world order where there is more respect and equality for each other and everyone’s culture.
Below is part of the speech that the Prime Minister Rama addressed in the ceremony:
I want to thank you for this touching welcome, which is a small example of the great friendship between our two peoples. A friendship that can still be felt in the air with all its dynamism.
It is a friendship that has gone through tough times, such as the Kosovo war, for which the Albanian people will always be grateful to the Turkish people.
During this time of peace with bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the Balkans, we have an historic opportunity to make peace a peace that is worth living, and I believe that the friendship and the special Turkish-Albanian relationship is an irreplaceable asset.
I had the privilege to experience it also during this intense day in Istanbul, where I had the opportunity to meet with President Erdoğan and discuss living prospects for the future.
Of course, change brought by art consists in new opportunities for people to dream, whereas change brought by politics consists in new paths to make dreams come true.
Politics is magic in the extend that it can collect people with the most varied backgrounds and create a multi-colored picture, a picture of the great efforts of the people to go forward even when backgrounds are completely different. But even when they are very similar, as was the case of Margaret Thatcher who was a chemist and Angela Merkel’s who is a PhD in Chemistry.
I see in this cultural diversity one of the reasons for my conviction that in these difficult days for the world, but even more in the coming days, besides the alliance of weapons, our civilization needs the alliance of minds and hearts united for a world order where there is more equality while respecting each other; where there is more equality while respecting the chances of every human being, and certainly where there is more equality while respecting everyone’s culture.
The university is one of the living examples of the ambition of today’s Turkey, a modern state who has to carry on its shoulders a particularly important role at a global level, in times when civilizations seem clashing, and when Islam is simultaneously both a target of barbarians who claim this religion to be theirs and of ignorant people who accuse Islam of creating barbarians.
Turkey is the country that best proves what I just said.
There is no need to have a deep knowledge of history to understand this. Suffice it just to go to Sultanahmet or Ortaköy, as there is no need to do a long research in many other places from the European side of Istanbul to the dozens of monuments erected by people of many beliefs throughout Anatolia.
Unfortunately, there is still to this day a lot of people in Europe who do not realize that the strength of Turkey today is in politics, as much as it is in culture, in its cultural heritage.
I modestly believe that the roots of our joint strength against the terrorism that today has extended its bloody hands in Ankara and Paris lie in this cultural wealth.”
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ITY University is one of the oldest universities in Turkey. Established in 1773, it has made a significant contribution to the formation of generations of many experts and specialists, who have left their mark in the building of the modern Turkish state.
