“Delegates, Official Language is Turkish!” Review of BALMBM18 by Gökdeniz YÜKSEL

“Delegates, the official language is Turkish!” Review of BALMBM18

Delegates, Official Language is Turkish!” Review of BALMBM18 by Gökdeniz YÜKSEL. Approximately 6 months ago one of my closest friends Sena Güngören told me that they’re planning to conduct a Turkish MUN Conference and asked me what I think about it. Well, to be honest first I thought it was a joke because the main attribute of MUN is being an English simulation of United Nations parliament and I couldn’t think how would it be Turkish. Then I realized they were very serious about it. I started to imagine and imitate somehow it was entertaining me.

They’ve started the preparations since December, interestingly in a three-month period the created a great team and hosted a great conference but the timing was very unfortunate for our school.

9th of March, I woke up at 6.30 a.m. in the morning and started to prepare quickly, had a breakfast, went to school in order to take my first math exam for this term. All of the exams was about trigonometry, all of us struggled with the questions. When we finished our exam, then left to school helter-skelter, took a cab to go to Antalya Bilim University Downtown Campus and we already missed the opening ceremony and first session. First coffee break we all try to understand the procedure because we were oblivious to what we were going to say. I was feeling like it was my first MUN because I was learning all the phrases from the beginning. I was representing the USA as the Minister of Security with two other ministers; Minister of Health and Minister of Interior at the Special Biological Warfare Committee. There were 10 country and procedure was kind of a mixture of GA and JCC. We were able to raise a motion for a moderated caucus and also semi-moderated caucus and we were not expected to write a resolution paper, we can also declare a war or sign a disarmament pact. In a word, everything was on us. I was confused as hell and when I take a look at the board I was still seeing some “tanx, arcsecx and triangles” because of the exam. At the end of the first day, I was dead…

Our USG İlkay Helin Akkaya was our delegate at AALMUN17 at UNODC Committee, therefore, it was very emotional for us to be her delegate. This might be my favourite part of MUNs, sometimes you are a delegate of someone who was your delegate once, sometimes someone is your delegate who was your committee director… Now, let me tell you about what we did during the sessions. The first day I heard a rumour that North Korea, China and other countries were trying to demolish the USA. Then Russia sent us a message paper saying that they wanted to merge our powers between the borders. We were like “Goddayuumm ! Just think for a second; American-Russian United States Federation!”, it sounded dope! The first day we had a hidden agreement, the second day we declare that to the committee while all the other countries were trying to create a health commission for biological warfares. Our tables united like our borders and board started to call all six of us as American-Russian United States Federation. Then they created a written decree and there was an item stating that “During the war situation, this health commission will be annulled.” When we saw that we all turned and said: “Let’s make WAR !” We got Japan on our side and we declared a war to other seven countries including; North Korea, Germany, France, China, Iran, Israel and UK. We didn’t have a conclusion about war but on the other hand, their resolution was terminated. It was a spontaneous action but our committee-director Ladin Türkkaynağı handled our mischiefs very well. During those two days I had so much fun and got the Outstanding Award, it is going to be one of the greatest MUN experiences of mine for sure!

They had three committees; ECOSOC, Security Council and Special Biological Warfare Cabinet. From conference to after party everything was on point! With that limited fee and team, it is very challenging to hold a huge conference like that!

For those who wonder, there are some Turkish versions of some MUN phrases,

-motion: önerge
-point: talep, istek
-USG: genel sekreter
-chair: başkan

Ex. “I would like to raise a motion for a moderated caucus in order to discuss “Biological Agents”, total time being 15 minutes and individual speaking time being 1,5 half minute” turns into that :

“Biyolojik Ajanlar” hakkında tartışmak için kişi başına 1,5 dakika düşmek şartıyla toplam 15 dakikalık bir denetimli oturum önergesi sunmak isterim”

Sincerely I can say that you all should add “Attending a Turkish MUN” to your to-do list! Believe me, you will have so much fun!

Gökdeniz Yüksel
Writer of MUNTURKEY

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