Peace Is A Process with negotiation expert William Ury | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

Can you tell a specific story where two warring parties were able to find common ground? A number of years ago, there was a terrible civil war raging in the country of Turkey between the Turks and the Kurds. 3,000 villages were destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were killed. A group of Turkish leaders and Kurdish leaders, they couldn't be known to be even talking to each other because they would be considered traitors by their own side. There was a retired Turkish admiral and he said, I want to acknowledge the suffering that the Kurdish villagers and all the Kurds suffered over the last 30 years, and I want to apologize. There was this kind of like quiet and then spontaneous applause. That one little apology shifted the tone. And out of that meeting, these same people agreed to form a network to work together. And that work went on for years afterwards. And a lot of it I attribute to that little shift one person making an apology.