Do what the Turks say, not what they do

Özgül Erdemli Mutlu is currently the director of corporate communications and environment policies at the Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats (TEMA). Founded in 1992, TEMA is one of Turkey's most prominent and influential environmental NGOs.

Özgül, who studied at the London School of Economics, was a recipient of a Chevening Scholarship, funded among others by the U.K.'s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. When we recently met as a group of Chevening alumnae from five neighboring countries - Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine - at a mountain resort near Tbilisi for two days of brainstorming, we were asked to talk about personal efforts through which we contributed to change.

Özgül told me with pride how TEMA had played an instrumental role in 2012 stopping a British company from nickel mining at the Gediz plane in the Aegean, one of Turkey's most fertile planes. "Had it gone ahead, it would have been the third biggest British investment in Turkey," she said. 

The members of the British committee to select Özgül Erdemli Mutlu for the Chevening Scholarship were certainly right in their estimation that she would become a change-maker in the future. But I doubt they would have imagined there would come a day when she would play an important role in obstructing a particular British investment. 

Nevertheless, her track record did not stop her from being invited to a meeting paid for by British taxpayers, where as representatives of civil society we came together for an exchange of views. That certainly is a clear sign of the tolerance, maturity and self-confidence of the U.K. - all attributes that countries in the region still have a long way to go in order to...