Where: Waterfront Hall, Belfast

Ozcan Keles, Director of the Dialogue Society participated in the Conference as panellist for two separate panels. During the Plenary Discussion entitled ‘The Global Challenges of Policing a Diverse Society’ Ozcan explained the basis of the DeRadicalisation by Default approach.

He explained that: “The process of deradicalisation cannot make deradicalisation its objective, since doing so automatically renders it reactive to the “other” and causes it to loose essential characteristics necessary for its success. A second flaw of making deradicalisation an objective in itself is that doing so means to inadvertently glorify the radicals and extremists. The size of the mechanism put in play to defeat extremists only feeds the martyrdom complex of such individuals and helps channel sympathy towards them.

Deradicalisation can only be achieved if it is the default outcome of a project which is positive and proactive and therefore sets its own agenda,” before providing further detail about this approach.