What We Mean When We Say “vicdan”

When we call ourselves Vicdan Foundation, we are not simply choosing a poetic name. We are putting at the center of our work a word that carries a very specific moral experience, shaped by the history and everyday life of this land. In many conversations, people try to translate “vicdan” as “conscience” or connect it to “consciousness”. These words come close in certain ways, but they do not really touch what we mean. For us, “vicdan” is the place where moral clarity, compassion and the demand for justice meet and become action.

In English, “conscious” mainly refers to being awake and aware. It belongs to the world of the mind: awareness, perception, attention. “Conscience” is closer to an inner judge, an internal tribunal that measures actions against principles, rules and duties. It is often described in the language of reason: moral judgment, responsibility, guilt, obligation. When someone follows their conscience in this context, the story is usually told through rational language: “I knew this was wrong”, “I understood my duty”, “I could not justify this to myself.”

“vicdan”, as we live and feel it, reaches a similar destination – it also pushes a person toward good actions, toward not harming others, toward standing with the vulnerable. But it travels a different path to get there. Where “conscience” is often described as primarily rational, “vicdan” is experienced as both rational and deeply emotional at the same time. It is not just “I know this is wrong”; it is also “I feel this as wrong in a way that hurts.” It is not only an inner judge; it is also an inner wound that opens when we face injustice.

This difference becomes clearer if we look at the words that surround the idea. In English, what we mean by “vicdan” is scattered across many terms: conscience, heart, empathy, compassion, pity, moral sense, humanity. To describe a truly “vicdanlı” person, you would probably need to combine several of these: someone with a strong conscience, a soft heart, deep empathy, active compassion. In our language, “vicdan” gathers all of these into a single, dense word. That is why it is so powerful and so difficult to translate: it holds together mind and feeling, judgment and tenderness, principle and mercy.

The history of the word also matters. The older root of “vicdan” originally pointed to inner sensing, inner finding, a state of the heart. Over centuries, within the shared life of this region, that inner sensing took on a distinctly moral shape. It became an inner scale of good and evil, a source of mercy, the discomfort we feel in the face of injustice, the quiet refusal to treat another human being as disposable. When someone says, “My vicdan does not allow this,” it is not only a logical conclusion based on rules. It is a moral-emotional stand. Something inside says, “If I do this, I will betray what it means to be human.”

This is also why the word that means “without vicdan” is so heavy. It does not simply describe someone who is distant or emotionally cold. It points to a deeper accusation: a person who can witness suffering without being moved, who can use power without restraint, who can participate in harm without any internal protest. Such a person is not just insensitive; they are at peace with wrongdoing. In English, it would take several expressions to come close to this: heartless, cruel, without a conscience, morally blind. The fact that a single word can carry all of these shows how central “vicdan” is to the moral imagination here.

There is another dimension that is essential for us as Vicdan Foundation. For a long time, this region has been shaped by strong states and strong authorities. Ordinary people often live with the feeling that the state is powerful, distant and difficult to challenge. In many situations, they know that they cannot rely fully on formal mechanisms of justice. Laws exist, courts exist, procedures exist, but in practice they may be slow, selective, or closed to those who are weakest.

In such moments, something very characteristic happens: people appeal not only to the law, but directly to the person who holds power, through their vicdan. A citizen standing in front of an official may say, in different words: “I am asking you, not only as an authority, but as a human being, to listen to your vicdan.” This is not a legal argument. It is an appeal to the part of the other that still remembers what it is like to be vulnerable, powerless, in need of mercy. It assumes that inside even the representative of a very strong system there is still a fragile, human place that can be reached.

This scene tells us something crucial about the function of vicdan in our society: vicdan is the last court when all other courts fail. It is the remaining bridge between the powerless and the powerful when institutions are not enough. It is the space where someone who has every legal right to say “no” might still choose to say “yes”, simply because they cannot silence the voice inside that says, “If I do this, I will damage the dignity of another human being and I will damage something in myself.”

At the same time, we do not romanticize this picture. No society can rely only on personal goodness or individual awakenings. Justice requires strong institutions, fair rules and accountable structures. But we believe that without vicdan, these structures become empty shells: technically correct, but morally blind. And where structures are weak or misused, vicdan can still create small islands of humanity inside very harsh systems. Part of our mission is to protect and enlarge those islands, while also working for broader change.

When we, as Vicdan Foundation, speak about “vicdan”, we are talking about at least four interwoven dimensions. It is an inner sense of good and evil that feels almost natural, as if it is part of being human itself. It is compassion, the capacity to be touched by the suffering of others and to feel their pain as a call, not as a distant image. It is a sense of justice that refuses to accept that power alone decides what is right. And it is responsibility: the feeling that once you have seen and understood, you cannot remain neutral without injuring something essential in yourself.

We also insist that vicdan is not only a private matter. In many modern languages, conscience is mostly imagined as an individual mechanism: my conscience, your conscience, my personal guilt or inner struggle. In everyday speech here, people constantly talk about the conscience of society, the conscience of humanity, the conscience of a city or a generation. This is more than a stylistic habit. It expresses the belief that we share a common moral field, a shared sensitivity that can be awakened, numbed or healed together. When we speak of vicdan, we are pointing to this shared field as well.

So what exactly are we offering to the world with this word and with this work? First, we are proposing vicdan as a possible common language beyond identity. In a world increasingly divided by nationality, religion, ideology and group loyalty, we choose to start from another point. Before asking who you are, where you are from, which side you are on, we ask: what does your vicdan say when you encounter injustice, humiliation, hunger, war, exclusion? Our conviction is that if we can speak from that place – from that inner space where conscience, empathy, compassion and moral imagination come together – we can sometimes cross borders that diplomacy, slogans or even laws cannot cross.

Second, we are proposing that vicdan should be recognized as a public force. We want to bring this inner voice back to the center of social life. This means creating spaces where people listen to those who suffer and allow their vicdan to respond. It means connecting individuals who feel moral discomfort and helping them turn that discomfort into concrete solidarity instead of silent despair. It means inviting institutions, media and politics to ask not only “Is this legal?” or “Is this efficient?” but also “Is this compatible with human dignity as any honest vicdan would recognize it?”

Third, we are proposing that the difference between a rational, duty-centered conscience and an emotionally rich, heart-centered vicdan does not have to be a conflict. They can be two paths to similar good actions. A person guided by conscience might say, “I must do this because it is right.” A person guided by vicdan might say, “I cannot do otherwise because my whole being rebels against this injustice.” In many situations, they will stand side by side, doing the same good deed, but coming from slightly different inner landscapes. By naming “vicdan”, we are intentionally holding together what many cultures keep in separate boxes: reason and feeling, duty and tenderness, justice and mercy.

Our purpose as Vicdan Foundation is to protect, awaken and organize this capacity. To protect it, because vicdan can be dulled by fear, habit, propaganda and blind loyalty. To awaken it, because many people carry a sleeping vicdan that needs only a real encounter, an honest story, an unfiltered look at injustice to come alive again. And to organize it, because good intentions alone are not enough. vicdan needs paths, tools, networks and practices so that it can travel from a quiet discomfort inside one person to visible change in the life of another.

When we speak of a person with vicdan, we are not speaking of someone perfect. A person of vicdan is not someone who never fails, never feels tired, never feels afraid. It is someone who refuses to silence the inner voice that asks difficult questions, who allows discomfort to become reflection, and reflection to become action. As a foundation, we exist to stand beside those voices, to amplify them, to connect them, and to protect them when they are pressured to disappear.

If we had to summarize what we want to offer to the world in one line, it would be this: in an age of noise, power and speed, we invite everyone back to that quiet but insistent place inside that says, “This is wrong”, “This is right”, “This person’s pain concerns me.” We call that place vicdan. As long as it still speaks, there is hope for a more just and compassionate shared future.