Supporter Spotlight: Medeni Sungur
Freedom’s Champion: How did you get involved in the liberty movement?
Medeni Sungur: In 2008, I was a freshman in college and really interested in theoretical ideas. I was a bit of a nerd at the time, and I stumbled into this other group of young people from elite universities in Istanbul who were coming together in different cafes to talk about things that I could not find discussed at my own university or in my own political theory classes—like Mises and Hayek. We were really deeply discussing Austrian economics, spontaneous order, Popper’s epistemology—all the ideas that we couldn't find, especially in our freshman year, in our universities.
So I started going to these discussions, and from there I came across an event called Liberty School, put together by what at the time was probably the only classical liberal organization in Turkey. It was a small event, with maybe 50 or 60 students like me who wanted to talk about the history of political thought. The organization was based in Ankara, but they were organizing this event to draw in young and ambitious students and introduce them to the ideas of classical liberalism.
I met another student there who I became friends with, then I figured out there was a small, independent group of students that were coming together in Istanbul to discuss these ideas. I joined them, and from time to time we would use the Friedrich Naumann Foundation office to organize small events. It sounds like an underground club for non-mainstream economics, but we weren’t secretive; there just were very few people like us who were deeply interested in ideas. We had a group of about ten people, and we called ourselves the “3H Movement,” each “H” representing one of the Turkish words for “liberty,” “rule of law,” and “tolerance.”
FC: How were you introduced to Atlas Network?
Medeni: The secretary-general of the organization that put together the Liberty Schools introduced me to Tom Palmer. Tom has become one of the primary impacts and drivers in my life—early on as someone who is in the freedom movement and later as a mentor and a friend. Both his intellectual grasp and his humility have had a huge influence on me.
About a year later, in 2009, Tom invited me to attend Liberty Forum, back when it was held in Washington, D.C. It was actually my first transatlantic flight. I met more people in the freedom movement from around the world and became friends with many of them.
After a time, I graduated both from university and from the 3H Movement and went into the startup world, but I kept my foot in the liberty movement, and I kept attending Liberty Forums as a young business owner.
Eventually, I found my way back to the movement. I wanted to be involved in changing the course of my country, so I became one of the co-founders of Turkey’s first classical liberal policy think tank. Atlas Network Academy’s Think Tank MBA was a huge part of making that possible.
