After a mild winter and early break into spring weather, Turkey’s northwestern province of Düzce is officially announcing the start of one’s of the country’s most often overlooked and exciting sports, rafting.
Melen Çayı in Düzce is among the best-known rafting rivers in Turkey, with ample opportunities for both athletes and recreational rafters. The Düzce rafting season opened in March of this year and generally continues till July.
Although the country in the past hosted what would later become the Rafting World Championships, Turkey has never placed in the competition and is no longer scheduled to host large-scale International Rafting Federation (IRF) events.
This is something that rafting advocates and athletes hope to change in the near future. However, this will be difficult without a dedicated federation to guide the sport’s development.
Setting a new course
But there is hope. The related sporting branch of canoeing is governed by its own body in Turkey, and that may, on the side, help rafting develop the infrastructure and publicity it needs to get a federation off the ground.
Representatives from the International Canoe Federation (ICF) and the Turkish Canoe Federation (TCF) at the end of March visited Ardeşen in the Black Sea province of Rize to check the progress of a canoe and rafting course project. Construction on the new course has been under way since 2011.
Member of the ICF board of directors Jean-Michel Prono was impressed by the TCF’s project in Rize. “I was faced with results that surpassed my expectations,” Prono said.
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“In its current state, this project is not yet in line with international standards, but it has the foundations necessary for those standards. I am certain it will reach these standards when it is completed in the period ahead,” he added.
The course will be officially opened in a ceremony in May and both the TCF and ICF plan to hold international competitions there. Although it is being constructed by the more developed TCF, the course will also be suitable for rafting.
“Until today, Turkey has not had a course that met Olympic standards. The first step toward this has been taken in Ardeşen,” TCF head Sami Mengütay noted.
Turkey’s current
Not too far from the new course in Rize, the Çoruh River in the northwestern province of Erzurum — a prime rafting region in Turkey — carried the 1993 edition of the 50-team international competition of Project RAFT.
In 1994, Project RAFT participants decided to form a federation to govern the sport on a global level — the IRF. The rafting competition grew after that and has been officially declared a world championship event since 1995. The world championships have been held every two years since 2000.
Each river and rapid is given a rating between one and six, where one is a gentle current and six is nearly impassable. Çoruh is a class five, for much more experienced white-water athletes.
The IRF’s river database also lists Turkey’s Alaraçay and Dalaman rivers among its officially accepted rafting locales. Both rivers are on the sunny southwest Mediterranean coast of Turkey and are generally classed as class three rapids, although Dalaman moves up to class four in certain sections.
Turkey does host its own competitions, including the Erzurum Youth and Adult Rafting Championships last June on Tortum River in the district of Uzundere.
Twenty-two Turkish rafting teams were in attendance. The Çaykur, Ekstremtürk, Özüm Doğa, Yeşil Rizem, Munzur Fırat and İyidere sports clubs placed in the two-day event.
Redirecting the tide
Rafting is currently governed by Turkey’s Federation of Developing Sport Branches (GOSBF). As the name of the federation would suggest, the sport has not quite come into its own in Turkey. Most people still view it as a recreational or touristic activity.
However, the lack of a dedicated federation, plus the fact that the GOSBF has just one rafting delegate, is a mere technicality. The GOSBF is a fully established member of the IRF, the sporting body that organizes and oversees all major rafting events around the globe.
Beyond that, the sport is not widely regarded on the international level, either. Although canoeing and kayaking have been Olympic events every year since 1936, rafting has never been featured.
There are plans to change this mentality, at least in Turkey. Beyond the formation of a dedicated rafting federation, these plans will include the education and training of referees plus further development of courses and infrastructure in Turkey.
“The federation and our Youth & Sport Ministry’s education department are working together. We are planning to organize new coaching and judging courses in Antalya, Rize, Erzincan, Bursa, İstanbul, Ankara and more in 2013,” GOSBF rafting specialist and IRF committee vice-president Kanat Karamürsel told Sunday’s Zaman.
Karamürsel may no longer be the coach of the U-21 national team, which placed third in Sprint and H2H events at the 2010 world championships, but he still has plans to push Turkish rafting to new heights. “We are planning to participate in youth (U-19), junior (U-23) and Senior” divisions the World R6 Rafting Championships in New Zealand on November 13-24 this year, he said.
“We hope that we will be an independent federation — the Turkish Rafting Federation — as soon as possible,” Karamürsel added.
“This federation [GOSBF] is a bridge,” another GOSBF spokesman agreed. “Within perhaps a year, rafting and offshore could have independent federations.”
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