The first Steering Committee meeting of the Project “Toward a Deeper Understanding of Rural Europe” was held on July 25-26, 2008 at Bilkent University’s Department of Communication and Design; Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. Attending the Committee Meeting, presided by the head of Bilkent University’s Department of Communication and Design, Andreas Treske, were Project Coordinator Süha Ünsal; Assistant Coordinator Özge Çelikaslan; Oktay Özel, Ph.D, from Bilkent University’s Department of History; Mahmut Mutman, Ph.D, from the Department of Communication and Design; Süavi Aydın, Ph.D, from Hacettepe University’s Department of Anthropology; financial specialist Klaus Jürgens; Project Secretary Linda Stark; Metje Postma from Leiden University, the Project’s partner from the Netherlands; Alite Thijsen from the Dutch Art Institute; and Jean-François Moris and Stéphane de Tapia from Strasbourg II Marc Bloch University, the Project’s partner from France.

On the evening of the first day of the Steering Committee Meeting a Kick-Off Meeting was held at Bilkent University which enabled universities and institutions from our project partners Netherlands and France to be introduced to other persons and parties concerned.

The Steering Committee Meeting began with Head of Committee Andreas Treske summarizing the meeting agenda, project schedule and working plan. Following this, participants who are to work as the project’s academic advisors debated predominantly on questions of methodology. One of the fundamental components of the Project “Toward a Deeper Understanding of Rural Europe” is to conduct research on the 6 villages to be chosen in the 3 partner countries (the Netherlands, France and Turkey). This research will be carried out under the consultancy of academicians working for the project’s partner universities and/or academicians and specialists selected by these universities, but will be executed by students. According to the results of the first meeting, research methods used in the domains of anthropology/sociology and history will be applied during fieldwork envisaged to be conducted at the beginning of 2009; however, a method which is relatively new especially for Turkey will be adopted, which is the use of audiovisual tools during fieldwork, both for gathering data and for presenting and disseminating the information gathered. Therefore, students participating in the project will be from the fields of anthropology/sociology, history, and media and visual arts.

For this reason, the training of students to participate in research methods and fieldwork is a predominating subject for the project and was extensively discussed at the meeting.

A second topic that was debated was how to select the villages in which fieldwork will be conducted. The Committee decided that the selection of villages would be done in two stages; in addition to the general criteria that would be determined for choosing the villages and to which all partners would conform, special criteria should also be taken into consideration, which each partner would apply according its country’s historical, sociological and economic conditions. Within this framework, all partners agreed that they would prepare a short list of a specific number of villages – or regions – by the end of August.

Throughout the months of September and October the short lists prepared by each partner will be pared down by the Project Coordinator and partner Project Officers, by visiting the locations if need be, and the 2 villages in which fieldwork will be conducted in each partner country will be determined by the end of October at the latest. After debating for quite some time, social scientists and historians of the Steering Committee agreed upon the general criteria for selecting the villages, which were formulated by Mahmut Mutman, Ph.D. Within this framework, the Committee decided that villages would be selected according to the following criteria while also representing the country’s rural life as much as possible: arid/fertile, East-West/North-South (regional-economic differentiation according to each country), whether or not prior research has been conducted in the area, conservativeness/open-mindedness, and practicality for researching.

Though, as the project states, the general principle for selecting anthropology/sociology, history, and media and visual arts students to take part in fieldwork is that they be graduate students, it was pointed out that selecting media and visual arts students at the undergraduate level (proficient in using audiovisual tools) would have its practical advantages. Also, although resources are insufficient for the project budget and providing we are able to obtain other resources, it was decided that all partners would strive to determine the fieldwork teams by the end of September to increase the possibility for all or part of the students that are to participate in fieldwork to attend the “Visual Ethnography” course at the Leiden University between October 1 – December 6.

The aim is that fieldwork begin in January 2009 in accordance with the Schedule for Fieldwork that will be finalized at the end of November.

Besides the aforesaid topics, the Steering Committee mentioned possible names for the Scientific Advisory Council which will be composed of one or two academicians from each partner country; it was decided that this council of 3 or 6 persons would be determined by the beginning of September. In addition to this, the Committee discussed that EU specialists could be consulted for certain issues and decided that the Project Coordinator would look into the possibilities regarding this matter.

The Committee decided that 10 villager representatives from Turkey, and 5 each from the Netherlands and France would take part in the European Rural People’s Assembly, one of the project’s most important outputs within the framework of the aim for civil society dialogue; however, in order to ensure participation from other EU and candidate countries the Committee agreed to look into all possible resources and contact all relevant organizations.

Each group has begun working in its own country with the intention of completing the designated tasks until the next meeting, which will be held in Strasbourg in October, and of making fundamental decisions regarding the Best Practices seminar to be given in Strasbourg at the same time.