We have sent our application to the Municipality of Tunceli on 10th of April which includes our willingness to join the festival and the activities that we want to participate in. We also made an interview in Tunceli with the festival arrangement committee in May. In this interview we told them that our volunteers Isabel Mota and Yann Declerck, who came with the EVS program, will make an activity with the children in the content of “My World” project in a village which is far from the city center and to integrate it with the festival. Meanwhile we prepared the program of both these activities and our dancer group. We thought that it would be meaningful to make a contribution with this dance performance of our children who suffered from forced migration and this drawing atelier. We were informed that “Art Everywhere” organization group would answer us. Since they did not inform us, we had to call them all the time. We heard in the last minute that the program has changed and that we are not able to join the festival. After that, in the interview that we arranged with the president of Municipality, we were informed that we could join the festival. After the small talk that we had with the Art Everywhere organization group, we learnt that even though they were in Tunceli for the past one and a half month, the organization group didn’t know anything about our activities. After our criticism they contacted with us again. They told us that only the dance group can join the festival and they asked for the information of the dance group members. They also told us that we cannot make the drawing atelier. In the same day, ideas changed and they tried to create obstacles by using economical difficulties. They told us that the children should travel by bus and they should come back to Istanbul without staying or having a rest. After this we decided not to go to Tunceli and not to join the festival because of their attitude and of the fact that the children cannot take a 44 hour long travel. Since April both our volunteers and our children have been preparing themselves for the festival. We want to express that they were all really disappointed. We are having difficulties explaining the situation to our children who have been really excited about this festival. It is really difficult for them because they spent three days a week in our foundation to get ready for this instead of summer vacation. We wanted to take part in this festival so intensely because it was really important for us. Of course it was not a problem not to take part in it but we never accept such an attitude against our foundation. The things that made us sad were that they ignored our efforts, they didn’t care the struggle of our children who were so happy about this festival, they were insensitive about the communication and they performed a bad attitude on the subject. It is unacceptable to ignore the excitement, willingness and efforts of the children. This is the result of a narrow perspective and an irresponsible attitude. These kinds of festivals are aimed at integrating the people and if people will approach to the efforts of a group of children like this, the people in charge should think about their visions again. The poor children who suffered from migration and who cannot benefit from the opportunities are deprived of this excitement. Think that a child uses a word like “cruelly” about this attitude. We have no doubt that a child would never use a word like this. It is not difficult to agree on. Nothing could be worse than being cruel in a child’s eyes. (Attachment) To conclude, we expect the Tunceli Municipality to have a more institutional behavior in all other organizations. We think that the budget is not something to be discussed in one day. It was necessary for a foundation which organizes such a festival to prepare a plan for all the process. Such a problem should not affect the organizations. If the subject is children, people should be more sensitive. For us, this festival should have included the children instead of excluding them.  We wanted to share this bad experience with you. Because we feel ourselves really close to this city. First of all we are the people of this area. Our aim is to express how it made us sad and to criticize this attitude and more importantly to get attention for this incident not to see these kinds of attitudes again. 

Başak Culture and Art Foundation

Ronahi's Letter   My Thoughts about Tunceli We are a dancer group and we worked a lot as a group. We didn’t know that we were going to go to the Munzur Festival. Then Şahhanım abla told us that we were going to go to the festival. We were really happy but we didn’t know that we would become sad. Şahhanım abla give us the news later but it was not good like the other one. We understood that Tunceli is a CRUEL place. It was cruel enough to make 3 children or 6 children or 9 children sad. I hope Tunceli Municipality would never do something like that. I request you not to make a child sad again.

 My name: Ronahi

My surname: Dölek

My age: 9