Since I am not familiar with Turkey, nor Turkey with me, let me devote this first paragraph to personal remarks. I am a conservative, a liberal, a democrat, and a philosopher. I am a conservative because I believe that initiative in society should generally rest with the people rather than the state, and this is also the reason I am a democrat. I am a liberal because I believe that freedom - responsible freedom - is a value in itself, quite apart from its advantages. But today I am here as a philosopher.Philosophy is the intellectual discipline that searches for the coherence in things, and today I want to engage this intellectual discipline in order to make some sense out of the idea of democracy. And my particular method is to begin by taking my bearings from the changes I see around me.