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EMU Attends “Pandemonium” Conference in Athens

EMU Attends “Pandemonium” Conference in Athens
Published Date: Thursday, 1 September 2022


Chair of the Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) Business and Economics Faculty, Political Science and International Relations Department and President of EMU-CPC Prof. Dr. Ahmet Sözen and EMU-CPC Research Assistant Devrim Şahin attended a conference titled “Pandemonium: Interrogating The Apocalyptic Imaginaries Of Our Times" and delivered presentations about their work. The Pandemonium conference, the 15th of the Pan-European conference series held annually by the European International Studies Association (EISA), was held at Athens Panteion University between the 1st and 4th of September 2022.

Enduring Peace and Collective Action

Delivering a speech on the “International Environment" at the “ International Society: Expansion and Change" panel, Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin stated that the international legal order reflects an anarchic international society, yet today's international society has a universal nature. Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin stated that the understanding of “collective action" and “universal society" is essential for achieving enduring peace and explained that this quest is not new in the history of humanity and was foreseen by Ancient Greek philosophers including Aristotle. Pointing out that although nearly 2500 years have passed, the international community is still far from permanent peace and collective action, Dr. Sözen and Şahin added that short-term and individual political interests and ambitions are the main reasons for this. During the presentation, it was also emphasized that the problems of collective action could be overcome by placing the rules of international law into national legal systems as control and braking mechanisms and somehow, by intertwining them.

The Principle of Unpredictability

Speaking on the “foundations of knowledge" during the “Encounters of the Classical Approach with the Apocalypse" panel, Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin emphasized that the theories of international relations can inform the science of international law in a healthy way, with the acceptance of the paradigm shift in the scientific method. Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin put forth that the scientific methods of international relations are based on the reductionist Newtonian classical science used in physics, but this method, which has an understanding of a linear and predictable universe, is no longer popular in physics. Pointing to the rise of quantum science in physics in the light of Heisenberg's “unpredictability principle" since the early 1900s, Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin underlined that the universe is unpredictable according to this understanding, which focuses on transformative action-reaction spirals and complex-adaptive systemic features. Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin claimed that unlike physical systems, social systems are based on 'self-consciousness' and that with the acceptance of the unpredictability principle, an international legal framework that limits risky individual ambitions can be negotiated.

Revolutionary Chaotic Peace

The participants showed great interest in the panels during which the findings of the doctoral thesis on “Revolutionary Chaotic Peace" authored by Şahin and supervised by Prof. Dr. Sözen at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at EMU. Upon the questions about what the study, which claims to be a new theory, offers different from the existing theories in the literature, Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin pointed out that since the international relations system has been defined as anarchic, this understanding has never been openly rejected and everything else has been accepted as inapplicable. Pointing out that the Revolutionary Chaotic Peace theory calls for an end to this manipulative perception, Prof. Dr. Sözen and Şahin claimed that the international relations system can be analyzed more soundly by accepting the complexity principle, which is the common basis of quantum and chaotic understanding.





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