{"id":5085,"date":"2013-04-09T15:01:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T12:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/?p=5085"},"modified":"2024-03-08T10:56:16","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T10:56:16","slug":"turkey-rafting-5085","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/turkey-rafting-5085\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey prepares for sunny days of rafting ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Turkey<\/a>After a mild winter and early break into spring weather, Turkey’s northwestern province of D\u00fczce is officially announcing the start of one’s of the country’s most often overlooked and exciting sports, rafting.<\/h1>\n

Melen \u00c7ay\u0131 in D\u00fczce is among the best-known rafting rivers in Turkey, with ample opportunities for both athletes and recreational rafters. The D\u00fczce rafting season opened in March of this year and generally continues till July.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Setting a new course<\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Representatives from the International Canoe Federation (ICF) and the Turkish Canoe Federation (TCF) at the end of March visited Arde\u015fen 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.<\/p>\n

Member of the ICF board of directors Jean-Michel Prono was impressed by the TCF’s project in Rize. \u201cI was faced with results that surpassed my expectations,\u201d Prono said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil today, Turkey has not had a course that met Olympic standards. The first step toward this has been taken in Arde\u015fen,\u201d TCF head Sami Meng\u00fctay noted.<\/p>\n

Turkey’s current<\/h3>\n

Not too far from the new course in Rize, the \u00c7oruh 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Each river and rapid is given a rating between one and six, where one is a gentle current and six is nearly impassable. \u00c7oruh is a class five, for much more experienced white-water athletes.<\/p>\n

The IRF’s river database also lists Turkey’s Alara\u00e7ay 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.<\/p>\n

Turkey does host its own competitions, including the Erzurum Youth and Adult Rafting Championships last June on Tortum River in the district of Uzundere.<\/p>\n

Twenty-two Turkish rafting teams were in attendance. The \u00c7aykur, Ekstremt\u00fcrk, \u00d6z\u00fcm Do\u011fa, Ye\u015fil Rizem, Munzur F\u0131rat and \u0130yidere sports clubs placed in the two-day event.<\/p>\n

Redirecting the tide<\/h3>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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, \u0130stanbul, Ankara and more in 2013,\u201d GOSBF rafting specialist and IRF committee vice-president Kanat Karam\u00fcrsel told Sunday’s Zaman.<\/p>\n

Karam\u00fcrsel 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. \u201cWe are planning to participate in youth (U-19), junior (U-23) and Senior\u201d divisions the World R6 Rafting Championships in New Zealand on November 13-24 this year, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that we will be an independent federation — the Turkish Rafting Federation — as soon as possible,\u201d Karam\u00fcrsel added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis federation [GOSBF] is a bridge,\u201d another GOSBF spokesman agreed. \u201cWithin perhaps a year, rafting and offshore could have independent federations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a mild winter and early break into spring weather, Turkey’s northwestern province of D\u00fczce is officially announcing the start of one’s of the country’s most often overlooked and exciting sports, rafting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[7867,8169,7877,137,126,7],"tags":[8171,7875,7883],"class_list":["post-5085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-turkey","category-best-choice","category-politics","category-sectoral","category-sport","category-tourism","tag-best","tag-istanbul","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8498,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions\/8498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}