Hak-İş (Trade Union Confederation) Chairman Mahmut Arslan, President of Turkish Writers Union and Ankara Social Sciences University Rector Musa Kazım Arıcan and guests attended the program held in Tacettin Dervish Lodge to announce the declaration to the public.
After the opening speeches, the final declaration of the 5th Ethics Council was read. In the declaration, it was stated that the Covid-19 pandemic confronted all societies and the business world with a ethics test, and said, “The difficulty of accessing the vaccine in poor countries, the lack of immunity provided by the vaccine, the injustices in the health sector and the existing economic inequalities between countries have brought the world to the brink of a great ethics failure.”
Emphasizing that globalization and the digital age industry's vision of ethics weakened its ties with locality and created a new roadmap with actors, methods and instruments changing around the world, “The Islamic culture, which emphasizes solidarity and mercy, and on the other hand, the consumer culture, which is built with films, advertisements and many other cultural industry products with the slogan of 'living in the moment', centered on the pleasure and desires of the individual, is an option in front of people. It is not easy for an individual who is exposed to these two different ethics conceptions to form a consistent synthesis. Many people may exhibit inconsistent ethics behaviors as a result of these two different ethics conceptions, which they unconsciously internalize at the same time,” it was noted.
“AN ORDER WHERE THE STRONG OPPRESSES THE WEAK CANNOT BE ETHICAL”
The declaration, which included the view that "individual ethics build social ethics, and social ethics build individual ethics", continued with the following statements:
"The possibilities of creating a common ethics language for all societies should be sought. Our religion forbids any attempt to earn without working. In addition, it does not allow unfair gains such as bribery, usury, stockpiling, black market and cheating in shopping, exorbitant price increases for some products which disregard the ethic values of the society, disrupt trust and peace. Working life should be arranged with an approach that preserves family peace, promotes family value and provides work-life balance. Halal bite sensitivity should be at least as high as halal food sensitivity. Human labor is sacred. Man realizes himself on earth through his labor. Labor, which has the opportunity to realize the unique person himself, cannot be exploited. Awareness should be raised in order to determine the rights of workers, who are one of the biggest stakeholders of the production mechanism, in accordance with human dignity, and this measure should be one of the priority issues of politics. An order in which the strong crushes the weak cannot be ethical. There is oppression and cruelty in such an order. The laws of the state should not allow cruelty and oppression in any area, and it should be possible to preserve the ethics on the legal ground. In this sense, it should not be forgotten what is legal must also correspond to what is legitimate and ethical.”