Turkey's Changemakers: 'Negotiator students' make a difference solving problems

The latest episode of “Turkey’s Changemakers” features Prof. Dr. Abbas Turnuklu, who aims to solve issues arising in high schools by training students to become negotiators. 

Prof. Dr. Abbas Turnuklu is an academic at the Guidance and Psychological Counseling Department of the Education Faculty at Dokuz Eylul University. He developed a program to solve conflicts between high school students through negotiation.

Guidance counselors provide volunteering students with 30-hour training, where they learn about the nature of disagreements, and negotiation, debating, anger management and communication skills. These trained students work as negotiators at their schools to solve conflicts that may arise between other students.  

Prof. Dr. Abbas Turnuklu is also the author of a book entitled “Conflict Management, Debating and Peer-Negotiating Education Program: Preventing Violence at High Schools,” which features problems within schools and techniques to address such issues. The goal is to develop a text book from this content and distribute it to every single school in Turkey.