Padraig O'Malley: Bringing peace and dialogue for four decades

"This is a guy who has worked across both sides of the divide, in places where there is intense conflict, in South Africa, in Northern Ireland, and in Iraq," Charles Sennot, the Boston Globe's former Middle East Bureau Chief, says of Padraig O'Malley, the titular character in James Demo's documentary "The Peacemaker." 

O'Malley is the Irish mediator who has relentlessly tried to bring peace talks and dialogue to divided societies, from Northern Ireland to Kosovo and Nigeria, for more than four decades. He has written eight books on politics and divisiveness in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel and Palestine, among others.

O'Malley was recently in Ankara as a guest of the veteran film festival, Festival on Wheels, meeting the audience following the screening of "The Peacemaker." 

"I think, looking at Padraig and the role he has played, we come to an irony in history," says Mac Maharaj, the South African leader and once an advisor to Nelson Mandela in the film. "Backroom players never get acknowledged, yet they remain an essential part of the solution." 

'Everyone thinks their conflict is unique'

Padraig O'Malley brings in outside cultures that have suffered from similar conflict to share their stories. In 1997, he brought all the key parties of the Northern Irish peace process to South Africa to meet with Nelson Mandela at the Arniston Conference, known as the Great Indaba.

"Everyone thinks their conflict is unique. Everyone at first thinks they have little to learn from another divided society, but then they come to understand they have a lot to learn," O'Malley told the Hürriyet Daily News at the Ankara festival. "Many have a 'minority' or 'majority syndrome,' which allows both sides to...