On 27 October 2021, DPI ran a planned online roundtable meeting entitled ‘Digital Citizenship in Turkey: Opportunities and Challenges for Peace and Democratisation in Turkey’, which was held in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The meeting formed part of DPI’s series on the role technology can play to support, enhance and sustain peace processes.
In order to get a clearer understanding of digital citizenship and its relation to peace and democracy, DPI brought together four speakers to discuss the various challenges and opportunities regarding digital citizenship in Turkey. The event’s keynote speakers were Dr Emre Eren Kormaz, leader of the Digital Citizenship Project at the University of Oxford, Dr Türkay Salim Nefes, a Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council and research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, Can Çakır, supervisor of the social research unit at INGEV, and Ece Başay, the Public Policies Programme Director at Facebook.
The speakers discussed the main findings of the Digital Citizenship in Turkey report, a joint project of the University of Oxford, Oxford Centre for Technology and Development (OCTD), Facebook and INGEV (Human Development Foundation) and highlighted the relationship between digital citizenship and peacebuilding by analysing issues such as disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech.
The speakers and participants commonly agreed on the necessity for increasing digital awareness and literacy in among the Turkish population in order to address the key barriers facing digital citizenship today.
As part of the project ‘Forging Pathways to Peace and Democracy in Turkey’, the roundtable has served as an important contribution to DPI’s ongoing work focused on preparing society for future peace processes in Turkey.
The project is supported by the Norwegian, Irish and Swiss governments.