A floating exhibition will carry Turkish culture, arts, music and fashion to Europe, and its first stop will be Greece.
The “Floating Exhibition Project of Turkey” will be lauched on March 7 next year in İstanbul, when two ships will sail on March 8 to visit 15 port cities in 14 European countries.
The project’s coordinator, Oktay Ülkügüner, said the exhibition’s goal is to show that Turkey is not a burden but a source of power for Europe as Turkey has long been seeking entry into the European Union. “It will be Turkey’s biggest promotional project,” he said, as quoted by the Anatolia news agency. “There is a place on the ship for everybody whose heart beats for Turkey.”
Ülkügüner has invited both the private and public sectors to take part in the project intended to promote the new image of a Turkey “which has recorded great advances in every area.” He also mentioned that with an average age of 28, Turkey has the youngest population in Europe, meaning that the country has great energy.
The two ships, one which will house the exhibition and the other the participants, will leave for Greece’s Piraeus first. The journey will end in Sweden in April after a 12,000-mile trip. The ships are planning to stay in each port city for two days and are expected to attract approximately 30,000 visitors.
Ülkügüner explained that they have also planned big advertising campaigns for the event in each city the ships will visit. He said there are already about 4,000 firms that would like to take part in the project that will include Turkish concerts, Turkish food, and fashion shows displaying the latest trends in Turkish textiles.
The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) is going to broadcast live from the ports and will also produce a documentary on the journey of the ships, which will go to Naples, France’s Marseilles and Le Havre, Barcelona, Lisbon, London, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Gdansk, Riga, Helsinki and Stockholm.
One of the ships, Ro-Ro, has an area of 12,000 square meters to be used for the exhibition spread over its four floors. The exhibition will provide information on Turkey’s history, geography, administrative system, constitution, judicial system, macroeconomic developments, investment opportunities, industry, agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, construction sector, energy, mining, tourism potential, transportation, communication, education, science, health, culture and arts.
Inspiration for the project came from a 1926 exhibition which was prepared on the orders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey. At the time a floating exhibition visited 16 European ports.
The brochure for the recent “Floating Exhibition Project of Turkey” explains that the 1926 exhibition had visited the same ports that the new one will soon go to. “Even though the young republic had limited foreign trade, Atatürk had planned the exhibition to promote the new Turkish Republic. Therefore, we can describe the project as ‘From the Young Turkish Republic (1926) to the Modern Turkey (2011).’ The exhibition of 1926 had displayed Turkey’s main exports. There were also concerts by an orchestra which aimed to show Turkey’s contemporary goals. The Floating Exhibition Project of Turkey will emphasize that Turkey’s membership in the EU is going to be an important gain.”
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