A round-table meeting commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Visegrad Group (also known as "Visegrad Four" or "V4"), i.e. Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, was organized by GPoT Center in collaboration with the Consul Generals of the V4 countries in Istanbul under the chairmanship of the Consul General of Slovakia on March 28th, 2011.
The Director of GPoT Center, Dr. Akgün, spoke at the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington as one of the panelists on March 24th, 2011.
The joint event of CAP and Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) served for presentation and discussion of "The Perspectives of Turkey in the Middle East", a new study by the TESEV Institute on perceptions of Turkey by its Middle East neighbors on democracy, Iran, and Turkey’s role and influence in the region. Implications of the findings for US-Turkey relations were discussed, too.
Dr. Mensur Akgün participated in the second yearly meeting of the Middle East and North Africa Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (MENAPPAC) in Beirut between the 18th and 19th of March, 2011.
A group of high school students from Denmark, together with their professor Mr. Erik Boel from the Landsformand for Europabevægelsen and his colleague, visited GPoT Center on March 16th, 2011.
GPoT Center staff, Nigar Hacızade, Lenka Peťková, and Meltem Abalı, made brief presentations on Turkey's foreign policy, Middle East, the Cyprus question, EU-Turkey relations, and Iran's nuclear program. The Danish students enjoyed the opportunity to discuss topics of their interest with students of Istanbul Kültür University and GPoT Center's intern, Emre Unal.
Nigar Hacızade, one of the Project Officers of GPoT Center, attended the two-week International Leadership Academy on Conflict Prevention and Management, organized by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung in Gummersbach, Germany between February 27th and March 11th.
The course covered trends and causes of international conflicts, methods of conflict management as well as its practice. A policy brief on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict informed by the subject material of the seminar will be published online in March.
Director of GPoT Center, Dr. Mensur Akgün, together with other international academicians, government officials, and representatives from the private sector participated in a two-day conference entitled "China - Middle East Political and Energy Relations" in Singapore from March 10th to the 11th, 2011.