During a journey of 24 days the Middle East Team passed through; Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Syria culminating in a 10 day tour of Turkey. During the tour the team heard about the conflicts across the entire region and promoted the establishment of a culture of peace through a path of nonviolence. Meetings with pacifist, environmentalist, and religious groups, together with various politicians of various levels convinced the team that; *“the roots of violence are the same everywhere. People are suffering the same, regardless of the labels people have like their religion; underneath we are dealing with human beings who suffer the same. In speaking with people in these parts it was important to discuss the roots of the violence which are to be found in fear: the fear of loneliness, of insecurity, of illness, of death. This causes people to behave in violent ways. If you can resolve these problems, faith in the future grows and violence recedes,”* in the words of Eduardo Gozalo, member of the Middle East Team and driving force behind the events in Turkey.
When asked to comment on the situation in Turkey with ongoing tensions between the Turkish and Kurdish communities, Gozalo said, *“There is a proposal for peace that has to be supported. This doesn’t mean to support one side or the other, but to support the goal of peace itself regardless of where this proposal comes from. If we don’t see ourselves in a bigger picture our differences will continue to be sources of violence.”*
The World March South East Europe team will pass through the Balkans: the part of Europe that has most recently suffered the upheaval of war, ethnic cleansing and unimaginable violence. The March leaves Istanbul tomorrow to cross the border with Greece, before winding its way through the Republic of Macedonia (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy before arriving on the 9th of November in Geneva, Switzerland which will be the meeting point for 4 different legs of the World March including the Base Team which started its journey in Wellington, New Zealand on the 2nd of October.
During the encounter today, when asked about his hopes for the next leg of the World March, Giorgio Schultze, European Spokesperson for the World March, said: *“My hope is that we find some ambassadors of the future Universal Human Nation; if we would find one person in each place who could see where the roots of violence lay; If we can find people who can see that there is something sacred within each human being then we have a starting point for a way out of the violence.”*
Photo:
[http://picasaweb.google.com/pressenzaimmaginiitalia/WorldMarchInIstanbul#](http://picasaweb.google.com/pressenzaimmaginiitalia/WorldMarchInIstanbul# “http://picasaweb.google.com/pressenzaimmaginiitalia/WorldMarchInIstanbul#”)
Video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZcikHEyLLc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZcikHEyLLc “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZcikHEyLLc”)
