Mayor of Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Tunç Soyerattended the 9th Ordinary General Assembly of the İzmir Branch of the New Generation Village Institutes Association. Emphasizing the importance of village institutes in the establishment of a new Turkey after the earthquake, Mayor Soyer said, “We need to generate minds and ideas on how the new Turkey will be shaped. At this point, there is a great need for village institutes.”
Mayor of Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Tunç Soyerattended the 9th Ordinary General Assembly of the İzmir Branch of the New Generation Village Institutes Association. Speaking at the opening of the meeting, President Soyer said, “It is a great pain, a disaster. None of us can get out of the rubble. Another Turkey will be established. Hiroshima had claimed the lives of 200 people, a new world was established, the United Nations emerged. The disaster, which probably caused the loss of more than 100 thousand lives in Turkey, seems to lead to the establishment of a new Turkey. We need to generate minds and ideas on how the new Turkey will be shaped. At this point, there is a great need for village institutes.”
“No need to look for enemies”
Reminding that he visited Düziçi Village Institute in Osmaniye, Mayor Soyer said, “The buildings are standing. It has been standing for 75 years without saying rain, mud, snow, winter or earthquake. He had a land of 3 acres and the students and teachers there were really cultivating. They built a museum inside with only the materials left from Düziçi Village Institute. People are very impressed, you see how high quality education was given in these schools that were closed 75 years ago. Its foundations were laid at the 1923 Economics Congress. How we chopped it up, closed it, destroyed it is incomprehensible. The same eclipse applies to the Refik Saydam Hygiene Institute. Refik Saydam, the fourth prime minister of the Republic of Turkey, finds the typhus vaccine. If they hadn't closed that institute, maybe we would have found our own vaccine during the pandemic period without needing outside. There is no need to look for enemies for the harm we have done to ourselves. How we destroyed, chopped, closed these beautiful institutions on our own, great eclipse of mind. A new Turkey will be established, we have to refresh our memory again. We have to bring back the magnificent institution of the past, that great institution that brings life and science together, and that brings education and life together.”
Bayır: “I felt proud as an Izmirian”
CHP İzmir Deputy Tacettin Bayır said, “There was no state father in the first 48 hours of the earthquake. This battered us. It shocked us. We are neither Gölcük nor Bayraklı As a state, we did not learn a lesson from the earthquake. I am proud to be an Izmirian. I turn my head in Arsuz in Antakya. Izmir Metropolitan Municipality employees are manufacturing containers. I am very happy that the Metropolitan is considering this.” Özgün Utku, President of the İzmir Branch of the New Generation Village Institutes Association, said, “We are all there, we are under the rubble, we could not get out. I don't know if we can get out. This earthquake once again proved our head teacher Mustafa Kemal Atatürk right, who said, 'Science is the truest guide in life'.