The first of the 2023-2024 Fall Semester Political Science and Public Administration Department Seminars was held on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, at 17.00 at the Faculty of Political Sciences Meeting Hall. In this context, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Veysel Kurt presented a seminar titled "Palestine: How Can There Be a History of Occupation?”
Kurt started his speech by explaining how Palestine was occupied before the establishment of the State of Israel. In this context, he stated that in the region where the Jewish minority lived in addition to the Arab majority, the Muslim people were killed by various gangs and banditry activities, they were subjected to forced migration, and the region was occupied by the method of dehumanization. Stating that this method was the first occupation method in the Palestinian territories, Kurt emphasized that Jews were settled in the evacuated areas, thus starting the occupation process.
In the continuation of his speech, Kurt focused on the process of Israel's statehood. In this context, he mentioned the wars, conflicts, and agreements in the historical process. Stating that major attacks started in 2008, Kurt referred to the conflicts between Hamas and Israel and stated that rather than a conflict or war, Israel openly occupied the Palestinian territories, carried out ethnic cleansing with activities amounting to genocide in this sense, and continued the occupation with the settler policy. Stating that thousands of people lost their lives during the occupation process and thousands of them took refuge in other countries as refugees, Kurt argued that there are many issues that cause disagreements between Israel and Palestinians, but the biggest problem is Palestinian refugees.
Kurt concluded by saying that Hamas had carried out its biggest attack on Israel in recent years and that this attack was part of the decades-long struggle against the Israeli occupation. He also stated that this attack weakened the Israeli state authority and undermined Israel's credibility. Emphasizing that Palestine has ceased to be a unifying factor for Arab states, Kurt drew attention to Turkey's clear stance on this issue.
The seminar, which was intensely attended, ended with a question-and-answer session.
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