Report 10 July 2006
Representatives of NPP visited the Barışarock-Rock for peace HQ in Istanbul last week to offer the inclusion of the Rainbow Bridge peace concept with their festival. NPP had spotted an article in The New Anatolian newspaper featuring the rainbow colours and aligning them with peace.
The article said the festival was sponsored by Coca-Cola which surprised NPP since it had been assumed Barışarock had been initiated as an antithesis to such corporate brands as Coca-Cola. Indeed, it seems there must have been a misunderstanding or misprint in the newspaper because Barışarock representatives denied any association with Coca-Cola and even reject any offer of sponsorship from Coca-Cola or any other corporate party.Further more, they are against using the national slogan Peace at Home, Peace in the World because Ataturk was a soldier of war and they associate the national 'peace' slogan with nationalism and nationalist parties in Turkey.
NPP came away from the meeting concluding how confused a country Turkey is. Surely the concept of peace must invlove embracement, tolerance and compromise; not be anti-everything. Unfortunately, peace means different things to different people and as the years have passed, NPP has been forced to realise how naive and unrealistic the concept of Rainbow Bridge is.
Barışarock did offer NPP to promote the Rainbow Bridge concept at the festival, but the over whelming feeling of anti-establishment and aligning Ataturk with negative right-ring nationalism left a depressing, sad and uncomfortable taste in the mouth.
Arther C. Withernee, Correspondent for WEMW
Report 10 July 2006
