With Wrestling Match Canceled, Kırkpınar Sponsor Invests in Local Education

The cur­rent and longest-serv­ing agha – or gov­er­nor – of Turkey’s his­toric Kırkpınar olive oil wrestling tour­na­ment has announced an invest­ment in the local province’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem, Turkish daily, Habertürk, reports.

Seyfettin Selim, the patron and main spon­sor of the old­est con­tin­u­ously run­ning sport­ing event in the world, has invested in a state-of-the-art nurs­ery school and day­care cen­ter in the city of Edirne, which has hosted Kirkpinar since 1924.

“You can mea­sure many things in the devel­op­ment of cities. You can take roads, parks, build­ings,” Edirne mayor Recep Gürkan was quoted as say­ing by Habertürk. ​“But the cri­te­ria for the devel­op­ment of coun­tries are cer­tain. The pri­mary of these is edu­ca­tion, cul­ture and art.”

“No road, no green space and no bridge will carry nations to the future. The invest­ment you will make is an invest­ment in edu­ca­tion, an invest­ment in cul­ture and art,” he added. ​“Today, we are happy to bring this pre­cious edu­ca­tion home to our city, which will raise my dear brother Seyfettin Selim and our chil­dren in line with the prin­ci­ples and light of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk [the founder of mod­ern-day Turkey].”

Selim said at the event that he intended to have the facil­ity up and run­ning in time for the 659^th edi­tion of the Kırkpınar tour­na­ment, which was meant to take place this sum­mer before being can­celled as a result of the Covid-19 pan­demic.

While no for­mal date has been set, the six-cen­tury-old event has his­tor­i­cally taken place in the first two weeks of July with thou­sands of wrestlers gath­er­ing in Edirne to com­pete to become the başpehli­van, or head wrestler.

Wearing only a kıspet — the short, leather pants after which the event is named – wrestlers drenched in olive oil grap­ple in one-on-one matches until one of the two is knocked onto his back. It is esti­mated that two tons of olive oil are used each year over the course of the tour­na­ment.

According to leg­end, the event dates back to 1357 when a group of Ottoman sol­diers stopped near Edirne. To pass the time while the sol­diers waited for their next orders, 40 of them began wrestling. Even after the rest had fin­ished, the final two com­peted into the night and both were found dead the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

There was no win­ner that year, but since then the event has been held annu­ally with par­tic­i­pants wrestling in pairs until only one man is left stand­ing.

• Haberturk