WHO IS KULSSAK?
CULTURE-ART AND SOCIAL RESEARCH ORGANISATION (CASRO) ESTABLISHED PROCESS AND STRUCTURE

Established Process:

CASRO was established in March 2000 in Kocaeli University. Fifteen members continued the established activity for three months. In Turkey and especially in universities establishing organizations is very difficult and it has got a lot of procedure. So you have to be strong and patiently.

We added to organization a hundred and fifty new members in a short time. Actually this number is very important in Turkey because of even fifty person can establish a political party in our country. Therefore when we established to organization, The University and local administration (Police and Municipality) had interested a lot with us.

When we were making a student organization our aim was making some activities for our university’s social life, which become worse with the earthquake. Last 20 years there is culture degeneration in Turkey. Especially young people who are in universities feel this more. While we were making the projects about the future we cared about this a lot. Because this culture degeneration has effected us too. By doing cultural facilities, art activities and social searches we wanted to change the people which are around us, the people movement and stop the culture degeneration. We wanted to change ourselves too.

It’s difficult guessing our success and knowing degree of our success until that time. But we can say that surely, if we didn’t do this we would be a partner of a negative process or we would to something against of it this. We choosed the second one.

Structure and Administration:

In the first year and establishing time, our administration structure was a formal structure. Five person committee of management and after those activity comities and than there are members. You can see it in this board. (Table 7) We had five activity comities.

1) Cinema and Theatre
2) Picture
3) Music
4) Social Search
5) Issue and Broadcast

Every committee was making actives plans and do them with its members. They were giving information about the activities to the council of managers. The relationships and influences between the committees were weak. Council of managers were working as an organizer, which makes the projects for activities for everyone and every committee in the organization. All of members choose the council of managers for one time in a year. For about one year we have changed our administration structure because of our organization’s new necessities and position. Today we have more democratic, functional and informal administration structure. This structure is not perpendicular it is horizontal, not dioramic it is informal, not centralization, it is local. Today we can’t show our structure by a diagram because we have no activity committees and council of managers. Our organization is independent and elastic. Every members share projects for the future activity, plans and decisions. About every subject we make decisions by discussing and participation. It is like direct democracy in Greek city-states in the first century.

Today, we have music groups and theatre group in our organization. These groups work, completely independent and make their trial, equipment and something like that. These groups which has chance to exhibit his or her own demonstrations in academic year in festival for more person. Moreover we have an active member group which we in organize festivals, knowledge competitions, seminars, exhibitions, theatre play. Most of people in this group are from the founder members and they want postpone this job to the young people. Dynamism and member circulation is very important for us. Because it is very difficult to make a democratic structure which has a long life in Turkey’s conditions. It is also difficult to carry this kind of structure for the future.

ACTIVITIES IN LAST TWO YEARS

After establishing our organization in March in 2000. We organized a theatre exhibition and we gave this salary from this exhibition the children who were effected from the earthquake and their families. This organization Yılmaz Erdoğan who is the most famous artist in Turkey acted this play for us. We donated 3000 $ salary to the children who were effected from the earthquake. After that we organized first siring festival, which continued 5 days in May 2000. There were seminars, concerts, folk dances, theatre plays, and exhibitions in it. Our music group had concerted which was first for them. So most famous people met with students and public in this festival. After the final exams, some members of organization joined to “National Youth Camp” in Adıyaman.

After this term we attended to seminars and festivals first term in 2001. We represented our university and organization. In second term, we organized 2. Spring Festival again. There were seminars, theatre plays, folk dances, exhibition, competitions and concerts in this festival. There were or music and theatre groups shows in this festival. We organized free yacht trip in last day our festival. This yacht trip was first for Kocaeli. Finally, after our final exams many members travelled to Efes, Selcuk, Antalya, and Aspendos…. These places are important historical places in Turkey.

PROJECTS AND GOALS

In year 2001-2002 we have new projects and first of them is to change our organizations management structure. This project is very important for continues and future for have a long life. Another project of our organization is to do the third spring festival with our new and young members. These students will be in teaching the experiences, education and canalise the projects. If we say our projects and goals as activity. These are:

- Organize the seminars
- Represent our university in festival and competitions
- Joining youth festival and organization in Turkey.

The others are organizing third spring festival and third summer travel. We want to organize third spring as an international festival by your and the other student organizations that come from other countries joining. This is our huge and important aim for this year. We are looking forward for your ideas, suggestions and helps.