Yeditepe Üniversitesi in Istanbul, Turkey, hosted a hydrid Science Diplomacy Forum on 11-12 November 2025. In his invited keynote, Prof. Paul Arthur Berkman shared observations about “Science Diplomacy and the Choice to Build Common Interests with International Relations”.
The choice to build common interests has been recognized prominently – rather than to resolve conflicts – and applied by the United States with the Soviet Union after the Second World War to create the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which became the first nuclear arms agreement “with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind”, emanating from the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957-1958 that was renamed from the 3rd International Polar Year.
Learning lessons from the IGY and the “the oldest continuous climate research program created by humanity” – the 5th International Polar Year (IPY-5) in 2032-2033 is a powerful opportunity to build common interests globally with trust in science, especially as the journey awakens across the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2024-2033) and Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025-2034).
