BROOKINGS – Sinan Ciddi did not expect the response he received when he visited South Dakota State in 2012.

“It was an eye-opening experience I wasn’t entirely ready for,” said Ciddi, who is the executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University. 

“It was not what I expected, having been isolated in Washington for seven years. There’s a lot going on there and I learned people were connected to the world from what people call the flyover states. I met several people who received grants and had traveled to Turkey to enrich their middle and high school curricula; they knew how important the diversity of knowledge from all parts of the world was and passed that onto the students. And at the university, there was a plethora of academic engagement and a huge variety of programs.”

Ciddi hopes for a similar experience when he speaks at 7 p.m. Aug. 2 at the Research Park at South Dakota State University. His talk, “Democracies in Decline: the Case of Turkey,” is sponsored by the South Dakota World Affairs Council and will be held in room 153 of the Brookings Innovation Center.

“The South Dakota World Affairs Council has been a bridge between people in the state and citizens and events in Turkey since 2007 when the council was chosen by the Turkish Cultural Foundation to facilitate sponsored travel to Turkey for South Dakota teachers,” said Harriet Swedlund, SDWAC board member. 

She said 29 South Dakota teachers participated in a two-week tour in Turkey until the funding stopped in 2013. 

“Dr. Ciddi was keynote speaker for the last group as the political climate in Turkey was changing. Connecting with people who can bring firsthand information about the ramifications of the directions has continued to be essential. When Dr. Ciddi volunteered to come to South Dakota, SDWAC was pleased to provide inside information about this important hot topic that is in the news every day,” Swedlund said.

Ciddi does 15 to 20 talks in the U.S. a year. The talks give him a different perspective on how Turkey or Europe is viewed by the public but the talks are also an opportunity to expand his boundaries.

“I believe it’s part of my role as an educator. Our role is not to just speak to a classroom of 10-12 students a couple of times a week, we have a wider role to fulfill,” Ciddi said. 

“It’s incumbent on educators to not talk to their own crowd all of the time. That’s especially true of professors, who also have research expectations and other roles. There is a hungry audience out there who is yearning for information. It’s incumbent to not keep ourselves limited to publications and research, we need to disseminate that knowledge to the next generation.”

Ciddi will talk about the values of democratic governments and why they’re worthwhile to protect.

“Democracies are fragile. A lot of lessons can be learned when looking at them,” he said. “In the case of Turkey, you see a democratic institution that has been eroding. The recent vote is an ominous sign that the country has stepped beyond democracy. While Turkey is not compatible with what we see here, we have to ask what lessons we can take from that?

“There are forces that protect democratic governments, democratic themes and features, that are connected by the political body itself,” Ciddi continued. “We tend to think because we’re here, everything will be OK. What we should be worried about here is remembering that the general trends show that democracies are fragile.”

Courtesy photo