Thoughts on the spirit and welfare of a society

I presented my TEDx talk on the subject of connecting the dots between freedoms, the spirit of a society and the common bonds of love, which follows below, to an audience of some 4000 people, at the Volkswagen Arena on Saturday, November 20, 2015, having to cut out parts of it for fear that I would not be able to fit all of it into 18 minutes. Below is the full text of my talk. In order to give the text some context, I describe in bold text each visual that was reflected on the screen during my talk.

Slide: The Sweet Face of my 3-year-old son Mehmet Gürkaynak
I'm going to tell you a story today that revolves around a couple of Mehmets, but also a story about me. Who is this?
My son Mehmet. He's three years old. He doesn't yet understand what I do for a living. Every night, we try to agree on where I go in the mornings. He asks me before he goes to bed at night. "I'm a lawyer, I defend rights," I say to him. He doesn't understand; what are rights? I expect him to understand what law is when he's 5 years old. He still has time. For now, all he asks is, "But WHAT are you defending?" I see that the subject isn't clear to him so I say to him by showing great modesty, "I believe that I mostly defend innovative thoughts, son." “Because I particularly deal with competition law, freedom of speech, anti-corruption and Internet law, I believe I'm defending the main arteries that feed innovation and innovative thought, son," I say. Mehmet doesn't know how to roll his eyes yet. He doesn't know the expression, "at least." All he sees is that the man has lost his marbles so he says to me, without saying "at least," "Daddy, just tell me a story." "What would you like to be in the story?" I ask him. He always picks things that have nothing to do with each other. "Tell me a story that has a grader, a giraffe, Boris (Boris is our German shepherd), and a stadium in it," he says. And every story has to end with a stadium, always. He knows that. Because when I get to the part about the stadium, I start to sing to him the lullaby version of the Beşiktaş "Olé" song and he falls asleep listening to it. And then, with the pride of raising a good Beşiktaş fan and as one myself, I start thinking of the trials and tribulations he will go through as a Beşiktaş fan and finally fall asleep myself later on in the night.

Slide: A clean black slide
Today, I'm also going to tell you a story. A story that has in it Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, tomatoes, trotters dish and tripe dish, Bülent Eczacıbaşı, wheelchairs, Şanlıurfa, basketball, Yaşar Kemal, freedoms, a baby rhinoceros, a violin, embracing, and people. And all this in the space of a total of 18 minutes, including the time that has just gone by.

Slide: Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror — his Childhood, taking lessons from Ak Şemseddin
Who is this? No. This boy is not Keloğlan, and the man across from him is not Nasreddin Hodja.

Slide: Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror – Adulthood
What if I showed you this?
That's right, now you know who it is. This boy is the Khan, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror. And across from him? His Excellency Ak Şemseddin.
The sultan that opened and closed an era. From the Middle Ages to the New Era.
Now I ask: Are you living a better life today or did Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror have a more blissful and prosperous life? (Forget about the harem for a moment; don't take it as a measure of prosperity.)
Let's look at the answer to this question from someone else's perspective. Who is this?

Slide: My son Mehmet, in some place tropical, accompanying me on a diving vacation, enjoying a bubbly, flowery bath
You've already met him. My son Mehmet. Another Mehmet's childhood. On vacation, the little sir. When he comes back home, he'll be looking around for a bathtub like this and he'll ask, "Where are the flowers?" And of course we'll say "Oh, come on." to him. But more important, this is the plate of fruit that Mehmet ate when he came out of the water.

Slide: A plate of Tropical Fruit
Is there anybody out there who can tell me the names of each and every one of these fruits? I can't. But Mehmet can. Because he memorized their names as he ate them. I ate some of them for the first time in my life just like him. My son, in a certain category, knows more than I do at age 3. Fruit is something like this for him. Since we've been back, he looks at images on the computer of these fruit, practices and reinforces his knowledge. When you say, "Son, tell me the names of the fruit," he'll spurt out "Papaya."

Slide: Tomatoes on the Vine
But if you showed and asked not my Mehmet but Murat II's Mehmet, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, what this is, he wouldn't have known. He could speak 7 languages, but he wouldn't have known what this was. As a matter of fact, his teacher his excellency Ak Şemseddin wouldn't have known it either.
And actually, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror never did know what a tomato was. He died of gout at the age of 49. While he was destined to die from the legacy of gout that his ancestors had left him, he was also eating his favorite foods–eggs, shrimp, sheep's head, trotters and tripe dishes, chicken with chestnuts, liver and gizzards. Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror also ate rice but not the way we know it. The rice was cooked for him with pure Iranian rice and special oil from Vakfıkebir and contained quail and brain. He ate the purest of white breads. The Palace produced "ordinary bread," "pure white bread," and "the purest white bread." The "ordinary bread" of the palace was the type of white bread that we try not to eat too much today because we find it extremely processed. Today, you couldn't get gout, even if you wanted to. If you ate "brain" (which I do once in a couple years with my father Mehmet when we secretly go to the KimeNeMeyhanesi in Çiçek Pasajı), you have an idea about its cholesterol count. But the head physician of the Palace, Yakup Pasha, had no clue about this, despite his 30 years on the job. He didn't know and couldn’t have known what cholesterol was. If I asked you to pick up your cell phones and search for 3 minutes, you would say that “the Sultan should cut out the protein and the cholesterol and load up on Vitamin C." But Yakup Pasha was at the point of saying, "What, pray tell, is Vitamin C?" Because vitamins existed in nature at that time but knowledge of their existence didn't come for another 500 years. But let us all pay Yakup Pasha due respect. We're talking about a man who was a Palace chief physician for 30 years. He must have exhibited superb skills to avoid questioning even though in those 30 years, there's no telling how many times he had said, "There's no cure for this, my beloved Sultan." Exactly 30 years. And it was that great physician–it is said now that he was the one to find cures for some of the ailments we still deal with today–it was that great physician who used symptomatic treatment methods in his desperation to even fight water in order to cure "our sultan of the black, black waters that ran down toward his blessed feet." And who was he treating, no one other than Sultan Mehmet Khan, the Conqueror. As for my son Mehmet, God willing, if he should live a full life for as long as the average lifespan in Turkey, he can be expected to live approximately 35 years more than Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror. Even here in Turkey, where our survival is dependent on luck, the average lifespan is 78 at this time. And so, leaving out the business of the harem from the prosperity equation (I would appreciate it if you did not compare my son to Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in this respect), what is it, do you think, is responsible for the difference in prosperity between Mehmet, the son of Murat II, and my son Mehmet? Whatever it is, it's bound to be something that will prove this following person wrong.

Slide: Thomas Malthus
Who is this?
Thomas Malthus. England's first professor of economics. According to his theory, population multiplies geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, …) while food production grows arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, …) Because of this, serious famine will lead to mass deaths of hundreds of thousands in the world, empty continents, and human race will suffer heavy losses subsequently. We have been waiting for this to happen since 1789. Hunger is a major problem but it can't be said that Malthus was right. On the other hand, we can't say that Malthus was talking nonsense at the time he said this. In between Malthus created his theory and his theory did not come true, something changed and Malthus couldn't see it coming. He couldn't have foreseen it. The factor that created the difference in prosperity between Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror and Mehmet Gürkaynak got the best of Malthus too.
That factor is something that emerged as societies gained their freedom and embraced one another, as each member of every society began to interact more effectively with each other, and, using the TEDx term, after connecting the dots, people starting to freely think for themselves, building their thoughts on the foundations of others' thoughts. This factor was innovation, innovative and creative thinking. This factor is technology progressed thanks to this process. This is the factor that renders the lives of the Mehmets in two different worlds and saves the human race from its mathematical destiny.

Slide: A clean black slide
When each individual in a society is open to each other, able to interact with each other and nurture each other, when knowledge flows transparently and effectively and thoughts are freely discussed, this is when a society can prosper and grow with its own potential. Freedoms must be at their zenith if the elements that comprise society are to interact freely and as an attorney who has focused on the struggle for freedom of expression, who has worked in competition law, Internet law and on the anti-corruption field, I believe that I have contributed to protecting these freedoms and to taking them one step further. However, I also know that although these are the requirements, they are also insufficient in and of themselves; I have learned recently that even in an environment of freedom, people have to open their hearts and be all-embracing and tolerant in their daily lives. I have been an attorney for 18 years. For 18 years, I have pursued grand ideals with regard to freedom and in my own areas of interest. I have been teaching at the university level for 12 years. This has caused me to tackle with these matters in hundreds of local and international publications. In the last five years, however, I have begun to understand that establishing major ideals that will serve as building blocks is not enough–society needs the right spirit and inspiration. Otherwise, even if the dots multiply but they don’t connect. The interaction needed to take society forward will not be possible.

Slide: The Human Brain
It's important for a human being's brain structure to be in orderly form if one is to go forward and produce thoughts. Just as an anatomically and physiologically orderly brain is important for an individual, so is a free environment an essential requirement for society. "Freedom together" creates a society with a brain. In societies that are not free, the structures that produce thought are already broken. And even if the brain is in tip-top shape, a person may not be productive if the individual has no spirit. In the same way, a free society may also lack spirit. A society has a spirit and this spirit is nurtured with "common bonds of love" that connect one individual to another. If you're asking me what the spirit of a person is, let me show you its photograph. Have you ever seen a photograph of the spirit? Here it is:

Slide: The neuron
This is the spirit. Neurons. Really, these are what carry our feelings, our thought patterns, our new opinions, our memories, what makes us wake up in the mornings as the same person we were when we went to bed the night before–they carry everything of ours, everything. In death the spirit leaving the body is in my opinion, our neurons burning out with death, perishing with our memories and our identity. Close to one trillion neurons crazily embrace each other, constantly interacting, creating new thoughts, ideas and foundations. Both for the benefit of that brain, and also for other brains. When people cannot do this in a society, when individuals, that is, are broken off from each other, that society, as will happen when the connection between neurons is cut off, will be left without spirit. It is for this reason that at this point in my life, after pursuing so many grand concepts and ideals, I have started to understand that each one of us, one on one and person to person, needs to touch each other's lives with the same enthusiasm with which we run after those big concepts and ideals. The touches of real people that cause a concrete impact on other real people's lives, are how societies build up their spirits. I experience that each one of these touches, just like neurons embracing one another in the brain at the moment of birth of a new idea, become catalysts for the societal steps taken forward.
What is important here is to believe from the start that each chance to reciprocally nurture, person to person, is a part of the big picture, and that to show enthusiasm even to the possibility of saying "yes" to create a potential benefit, o create concrete benefits in our own sphere of influence to connect this point, created at that moment, to the big picture. Each one of these interactions become bricks in our life stories and we see that they in effect have a deep impact on our spirit, and that they work together to develop the brain of society and give it its spirit.

An example of witnessing the way these points connect, that is an example to this cluster of interactions, started in my life in Urfa and continued with Yaşar Kemal, and is now progressing through you in the direction of our disabled basketball players.

Slide: ELIG, Attorneys-at-Law Urfa Göktepe Secondary School
This is a school my law office built. It's in the village of Göktepe in the district of Haliliye in Şanlıurfa. We had it built on November 8, 2010. I'm not from Urfa. I'm from Biga, Çanakkale. The most serious shortage of schools in Turkey, we have learned, is in Urfa. That's why we built the school there. The government expanded it and it now looks as it does in the photograph.

Slide: Yaşar Kemal
Yaşar Kemal heard that I was having a school built in southeastern Turkey. He invited me over and congratulated me. He said, "Turkey's largest gap is in education and the arts." We were inspired by his words. Because pointed to the arts, as ELIG, Attorneys-at-Law, we became sponsors when the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts invited the Vienna Berlin Chamber Orchestra to perform on June 1, 2012.

Slide: Anne-Sophie Mutter
While we were listening to the world's best violin virtuoso, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yaşar Kemal, who was of course invited, told me, "You're the sponsor, go and sit in the front, next to Bülent Bey." So that's what I did.

Slide: Bülent Eczacıbaşı
I watched the concert sitting side by side with Bülent Eczacıbaşı and we chatted after the concert. He said to me, "How nice it would be if you were a member of TÜSİAD; we could benefit greatly from your work in law." My esteemed friend and client Ümit Boyner was TÜSİAD president at the time. After this talk I became a member of TÜSİAD.

Slide: Photo of the ELİG Engelli Yıldızlar (Disabled Stars) Basketball Team in the Field
The following year, we founded the ELİG Engelli Yıldızlar Basketball Team to give our support to a segment of the population that had always been isolated from the other neurons, or individuals, in the community. Under our sponsorship, the team rose to the Garanti Bank Super League. This year, we will play the games of our dreams against Galatasaray and Beşiktaş. My desire is to stimulate people to sponsor and to call the attention of other potential sponsors to this extraordinary sport where both girls and boys play in fierce competition.

Slide: TÜSİAD Assistant Secretary-General Ms. Melda Çele
Just at this point, Ms. Melda Çele, the Assistant Secretary-General of TÜSİAD which is the organization in which I am now a member of the management team, asked me if I would like to deliver a speech to about 30 students at the organization called "Renkli Kampüs". I said I would.

Slide: Renkli Kampüs Logo
The speech I delivered there was very much appreciated. The news traveled and this time, I was asked whether I would like to give a TEDX talk. I said I would. Before coming here, last Tuesday, I had dinner with the ELİG Engelli Yıldızlar Basketball Team at their locale in Fatih, İstanbul.

Slide: Two disabled women basketball players on our team: Asiye and Selin
Today, I am delivering this speech on "connecting the dots." I answered the question of "What importance does this have for the community?” and explained the importance of nurturing individual and concrete touches. If people like the talk, these topics will travel. I will publish the text of the talk. Then it will be viewed on the Internet. Maybe some attorney, maybe a businessman, an industrialist will stop to take a look at wheelchair basketball and maybe decide to become a sponsor. The students in Urfa, Yaşar Kemal, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Bülent Eczacıbaşı, Melda Çele, Renkli Kampüs, the people coming to TedxIstanbul, all of the people watching and sharing the video, without knowing it, will have touched the lives of these two people, Asiye and Selin, and hundreds like them. Likewise, Asiye and Selin will be touching others’ lives too. They will be able to touch the life of some other disabled girl confined at home by inspiring confidence and demonstrating themselves as the example and join her with the sport and the world outside.  People embracing people will make us all stronger and take us all forward, to wellbeing and prosperity.
As you can see, neurons are all exploding around us. The brain is moving on into new areas. People touching people is changing concrete lives and creating impact. Everything starts with saying yes even to the slightest chance of creating good, with being active, with spreading energy and letting with that energy the bigger picture to draw itself  by creating value.
As the bigger picture emerges, the greatest ally of the people is the "common bonds of love between people and all living beings." This is the subject of my first Tweet on my Twitter account. The words that Shinzo Abe spoke in Tokyo, that law serve to reinforce the common bonds of love… This is the unifying element. Law is not yet quite there in Turkey but it has to get there. So far, I've written close to 3000 Tweets from my Twitter account. None of these were Retweeted as much as this Tweet where I shared this photograph and explained it. No other Tweet of mine has been embraced by followers as much as this one.

Slide: A Baby Rhino, whose mother had been killed by hunters, leaning against a Gray Jeep thinking it is its Mother
If a modest account like mine with more than 7000 followers can get more than 600 Retweets with a single Tweet, the owner of that account should stop and ask, "What just happened?" If having Twitter open to access and sharing something on Twitter is the symbol of freedom itself, then what this signifies is that people remaining static on this free platform can move when their hearts are warm and interact with each other with the feeling of love and trigger each other like neurons in the brain. Love is not a word. It's an action. It can only happen through effort. For this reason, each person creating this love need to make effort towards what will render them better.
If, while letting the bigger picture unfold, the greatest ally of the people is “strengthening the common bonds of love through creating concrete benefits for people’s lives and gaining spirit as a society”, the enemy is “eye rolling”. Which is, isolating oneself. Letting oneself go towards boredom or towards a judgmental inaction.

Slide: The Adolescent Girl who Rolls her Eyes as She Talks on the Telephone
Being elegant is a good thing but it may not be a requirement for bringing benefit into people's lives. But to be passionate and enthusiastic, to run toward any opportunity to create benefit is the only way to strengthen society’s common bonds of love. In fact, there are those who say that I am very disciplined and even rigid at work. I, for a fact, know that some people abstain from me. But no one can deny my passion and enthusiasm. There is no way of benefiting ourselves or other living beings on the world without running out into the field without reason and attempt to create value even if you don't know how the game will turnout, without believing that humans are intrinsically good and believe that one will benefit from each interaction, without starting the conversation with a “yes”.

 Slide: A Clean Black Slide
In a country where people at a stadium can disrupt a moment of commemoration for the victims of the Paris massacre, it is now time to worry not only for basic freedoms but also for the spirit and dignity of the society. Every individual, one on one, person to person, should make an effort in the direction of those common bonds of love. Without discriminating based on languages, religions, or nationalities, without separating. To do this, we need maximize the dots by saying "Yes" to each sharing opportunity and while exerting the positive energy to connect those new dots created by the previous dots, we shouldn’t worry about how all this will fit into the bigger picture which is the story of our lives or employ an effort to design. Thank you for your patience and for listening to me.