30th Utopias Meeting: Playful Utopias

From Börklüce Mustafa to Savaş Emek

Setting the Game, Breaking the Game

In the 15th century, a fire was lit in the vicinity of İzmir-Aydın. Börklüce Mustafa became a disciple of Sheikh Bedreddin. The Muslim, Christian, and Jewish populace rose up for a more brotherly, more equal world.

But the game had been well set. Those who played the game had played it well. Wealth had been distributed to the right people. Bribery, oppression, and darkness won. The fire was reduced to ashes.

From time to time, freedom, equality, and brotherhood were reborn from those same ashes. Humanity's great aspirations were resurrected at the most unexpected moments, under the leadership of the most unexpected people.

The Aegean peasants and the Efes rose up against the British tobacco monopoly that dominated the İzmir-Aydın railway and its local collaborators.

Every time, the uprisings ended in bloodshed. Years later, the ideal of freedom flared up again in the same lands. On September 9, 1922, freedom, equality, and brotherhood were reborn from their ashes.

The forces of darkness gradually smothered the light once more. At the most unexpected moments, people with their heads held high appeared again. One of them, Can Yücel, stoked the fire once more. The first Utopias Meeting was held in 1994. Yusuf Savaş Emek took over the torch.

That torch is still burning today. As a writer for Dağarcık Türkiye, I have the honor of holding one end of that torch.

Today, games are being set again. Those who play the game play it well: Plots, schemes, fake news, empty beliefs, and political conspiracies... Of course, there are those who will break these games. At the most unexpected moments, the most unexpected people rise up and shout the truth. Finding the truth, however, is impossible without utopias. We need utopias more than ever to break their games and set new ones.

Utopians are meeting in Karaburun, İzmir, on September 27-29, 2024.

In our 30th year, we embrace utopias with the same childlike wonder and the same excitement.

Life began with play. We learned through play, we taught through play.

We took on social roles. We took revenge on power through games.

We grasped the world through play. We turned the world into a toy.

The smartest among us grasped the importance of play and childlikeness.

One wanted to leave the world to the children for just one day; the other gifted the most beautiful of days to all the children of the world.

From mythological times to today, we have been setting games and playing games.

Sometimes we are extras in games written by others. A moment comes when we break the game and set a brand new one. With the longing for a future where we all set the game together and play to our hearts' content for all of us, we invite you to the most beautiful of games: to dream of the future.