Team
Prof. Dr. R. Funda BARBAROS
I’ve been trying to understand and re-read the universe, planet and human species we have been in for many years. Respect for life, freedom, and according to the laws of nature to establish a life in harmony. I am one of the people who put forward the idea of establishing Zeytince Ecological Life Support Association. I support this idea to be built as broadly as possible. I learn and teach on ecological economics, co-culture and olive. I say ”Art-Literature-Ecological Economics“ to make another world possible.
Doç. Dr. Meneviş Uzbay PİRİLİ
I would like to explain the meaning and importance of the Zeytince Association and our olive school for me, and above all the hope and goodness that it brings to my life through the concept of ve love of the world ın – amor mundi.
We know the concept of love of the world from the writings of the famous political and social scientist Hannah Arent. The world, on the one hand, indicates the planet we live in and all the possibilities it offers to us, the ecological system. However, at the same time, the Earth, within the physical possibilities of the earth, involves all the practices, institutions and cultures that people create in a wide variety of relationships within the network and which give meaning to their lives. Love of the world, so amor mundi; and the sense of responsibility and responsibility for adapting the world to the future generations as a place to live the world.
The Amor mundi is not only an abstract concept, but it also includes the possibilities of practicing it in practice. In other words, it emphasizes the importance of public space which allows us to think together, remember, discuss our common problems and find common solutions in common. The Zeytince Association, in my life, is one of the important ways in the realization of amor mundin.
To be able to propose a way of life that is compatible with what nature offers, and to put it into practice by thinking together, is a difficult process that involves contradictions. In this process, traditional life with modern life on the one hand; contemporary culture / knowledge with ancient culture / knowledge; There is a need to find creative solutions that make the existing contradictions between naturalness and modern technology sustainable. On the other hand, to be able to communicate with each other in the real sense and to act in solidarity; it requires us to learn and develop a culture and ethics of communication based on consensus and plurality, not on absolutism and uniqueness, in an environment where each one of us is confronted with differences and disinterestedness, sometimes contradictions are inevitable. Plurality is the principle of our planet and nature. For me, the Zeytince association is a very precious journey that I have experienced and learned both within us and outside and the plurality in nature and mentally in practice.
Selin TUNÇER
I was born as the second daughter of a family who migrated from Karaburun to İzmir due to work and smelling sea and daffodils.
The existence of my village (Eğlenhoca), where transportation was provided with difficulties, was so precious … I have had every experience light that I have here. But my family was growing up under an olive tree tied to their roots.
The first tree to carry an ancient soul that has born itself has always been effective in the process of self-knowledge. Like thoughts are found in the hands of philosophy.
I have found myself in the existence of the Zeytince Association while aiming to establish an attentive relationship with nature. Now I’m going to another world of the Zeytince Association, which belongs to everyone, but who is not really anyone, is also liveable after we go.
Özge YILMAZ
She was one of the founders of Zeytince Association and was chairman of the Board of Directors of Zeytince Association until September 2018-2021. She has been working as a certified financial adviser for more than 15 years. She is the co-founder of Mimas Organic Soap Production Company in Karaburun
Akın ERDOĞAN
I was born in 1986 in Samsun. In 2006, I came to İzmir from Aydın, where I spent my childhood. In 2013 I became a part of the Zeytince story by being the president of Zeytince with having great happiness inside. Now I’m going to start the longest road in my own short story with Olive Academy. With all of my defined areas left behind and shared together in an unspecified future, in solidarity with you and myself i wish to meet again …
Dr. Pınar BÖRÜ
I was born in Ankara and grew up as a city girl. “Not knowing where thyme smell is coming from and not knowing where to find it”. I completed my bachelor’s degree in mathematics and my master’s degree in economics. I am now continuing my doctorate in economics. The transformation to the green living began with the curiosity in Ecological Economics. With the formation of Zeytince this transformation began to sprout and grow. I am delighted that I realized our conscious or unconscious choices have a role in creating dead-end roads fro people and I am happy that I have come across Zeytince in searching for an alternative.
Leyla ÖĞÜT
She graduated from Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Fine Arts Fashion and Textile Design in 2010. Öğüt, who started her master’s degree in Design Theories and Studies at Izmir University of Economics in 2012, simultaneously continued her education in the marketing-based MBA distance education program at LIGS University. As of 2011, she worked as a middle and senior manager responsible for domestic and regional abroad in the visual communication and fashion visual presentation departments of international fashion and textile companies. In addition, she managed the communication, operation management and brand identity consultancy processes of local fashion companies, language and culture institutes. During 2016-2018, she worked as a lecturer in the courses of Basic Art, Fashion History and Sustainable Fashion Design at Faruk Saraç Vocational School of Design Istanbul campus. Between 2012 and 2016, she participated in various international symposiums and published articles on social identity, urban transformation strategies, and creative industries. For six months between 2018-2019, she worked as a volunteer in various local projects in Latin American countries. Between May-December 2019, she worked as a project coordinator in Das Spracheninstitut Kassel-Izmir. As of December 2019, she continues her career as Kahuna Information Technology-based product development and operations manager.
Cansu Pelin İŞBİLEN
Cansu Pelin, who graduated from the department of architecture, has completed the ITU Industrial Product Design master’s program in the example of picnic activity in Izmir Bayraklı Beach. Since 2015, he has been working within the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality on the Izmir History Project, which focuses on the historical city center of Izmir.
Naime SÜRENKÖK
As someone who was born on World Environment Day on June 5th, it’s like I’ve been on this road since I was a little girl. My white-collar work experience in agriculture, and my time in the village caring for goats and bees, has given me a lot, and I’m not going to become a human being now. However, since our paths crossed with the original Zeytince Association, I have found companions to imagine and plan many activities to draw attention to ecological struggle and climate crisis.
Sururi URAS
My sunny days, my hairy days, my grandmother with flying horses, my grandmother who goes to the summer house on camel back, my house with swing trees in its backyard, my sky eyes,
I’m crying pomegranate seeds, my nephews who got the vaccine, My life water, I will plant the dry branch in your hand if the apocalypse breaks, I will run the mansion for the tree, my roses with a letter on their thorn,
Let’s sing the cry that I planted seeds in even the dust, the first syllable is water, every night became my star life.
When my father taught me that the book was made of wood, I put leaves between my first book my mother bought.
Supposedly, I would have the leaves folded into their branches. When I said the first book my mom bought, you know what it was? The ‘Tales of La Fontaine as a whole’ where all nature speaks.
I was nature, I forgot.
I am confused whether I came to our Olive School or our Olive School came to me. I don’t know how this school became everywhere for me.
My childhood was on every yellow sign (now brown) journey entered, every water’s edge, every cave mouth, every slope,
shadow shirt sleeve, easy stance collar, taking a break under each tree, 7-8 hours of travel, 15-20 hours passed. On the way, my mother would peel cucumbers for all of us and stick the peel on our faces.
Cucumber had bitterness back then, does anyone remember? When the bitterness of the cucumber hits, my mother used to say, bite the other end. Surprise, cucumber would be sweet in an instant.
My mother was a wise woman like any mother, a woman with sights, and my father was a man with sprouts.
I was already in the lap of nature, I forgot.
I have a place here, I am very happy. Turns out I used to speak “olive”, I remember it every day.
I hug everyone.
Yeşim VARDAR
(Izmir, 1987)
Short Biography: After graduating from Ege University, Department of Economics in 2011, I began my Master’s degree in Economics at Ege University. While I am researching my thesis writing, I am actively working in the field of foreign trade in the private sector.
Motivation: I learned that in my days in my olive fields in the Karaburun-Eğlenhoca Village of İzmir, I had a habit that I could never give up without actually knowing. Intertwined with nature. I felt the sharp cold of the wind and the heat of the sun sweltering under the olive trees of my grandparents and even grandparents. My knees have learned to lean against the ground. I grew up in olive trees while still as beautiful and healthy. In addition to the researches that I have read, learned and learning from sources, I am the one who managed to learn by touching this long life of olive. In my life that shifted towards the city as a necessity for education and livelihood, one side of me always continued to nature with longing and longing.
In this context, Zeytince, who has been living since its establishment, started out with a group of researchers living in the city who never turned their faces into nature by dreaming of creating ecological alternative living spaces. With the decision to discover oneself more on the road, it is possible for everyone to present their own traces.
Together with Zeytince, I believe that living as a whole with olive in ecological life will be able to reach the secrets that I have not discovered, to observe the added value that organized knowledge will bring, to include what I need and to learn to find all the beauties that come from nature but not known by adding new ones when necessary. I believe that thanks to the positive energies of the participants and the positive energy of nature, the fertile fruit of the soil will help the olive to see the value it deserves.
Burcu HASRA
I was born in Bilecik in 1984. I graduated from Aydin Adnan Menderes University Faculty of Education in 2006 and have been working as a classroom teacher in the Ministry of National Education ever since. I have always questioned man and man’s relationship with nature as I try to understand and make sense of “me” in the existing cycle. I tried to live in harmony with what nature has to offer.I wanted my individual actions to multiply and make sense of the whole. While I think about how I can strengthen children’s ties with nature and what I can do to raise ecological awareness in schools, one day, my path crossed with the members of the Olive School and the Olive Ecological Life Support Association with the “Fairy Tales Touching Nature” event.
And today I am here because I am excited to hear the story of zeytince’s founding and I would love to be in all the stories that he will write in the future.
Belfu Nihal SOLMAZ
I graduated from Ege University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Economics. Since 2016, I am a member of Zeynep EYDD.
I learned the most beautiful and most meaningful way of olive oil watering the roots of my roots in Zeytince. I am happy to be in a place that carries the same concerns and even produces solutions in the way I go with ecological concerns. I have the excitement and energy of being in Zeytince, which opens beautiful gates and brings together the doors that it opens with ecology, philosophy, science and mind.
Hope to be a partner to the story of an olive tree that has touched centuries and to live this hope with the whole world.
