Recep Kara Wins Emotional 655th Kirkpinar

Recep Kara over­pow­ered his oppo­nent Mehmet Y. Yeşil to win the 655^th annual Kirkpinar olive oil wrestling tour­na­ment today in Edirne’s Kirkpinar region amid Turkey’s polit­i­cal tur­moil.

2,000 kilo­grams of olive oil were pre­pared for the 1,969 wrestlers who applied to the tour­na­ment, which was noted to be the most appli­ca­tions the tour­na­ment had ever received.

In the open­ing speech of the famous annual tour­na­ment, which is fol­lowed closely by peo­ple in Turkey, Musa Aydin, the pres­i­dent of the Wrestling Federation remarked that Kirkpinar ​“shall take place as long as the Turkish nation stands.” Numerous ref­er­ences were made allud­ing to the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Turkey dur­ing the tour­na­ment by view­ers, com­ments of the con­tes­tants and the orga­niz­ers.

Throughout the tour­na­ment, nation­al­is­tic polit­i­cal slo­gans in sup­port of ​“the heroic Turkish police” and ​“the great Turkish nation” were observed.

The tra­di­tional fes­ti­val that usu­ally takes place before the wrestling matches begin was can­celled due to tur­bu­lent events that arose after the recent coup attempt. Recep Gürkan, mayor of the host­ing city Edirne, announced on 17 July that peo­ple who lost their lives in the events must be respected, hence the con­certs, cook­ing con­tests, folk dances and the archery fes­ti­val that were sup­posed to mark the open­ing of the fes­ti­val would not take place.

The final round of the olive oil wrestling tour­na­ment was con­cluded today with Recep Kara over­pow­er­ing his oppo­nent Mehmet Y. Yeşil.

Kara became a four-time win­ner of the Kirkpinar wrestling tour­na­ment. The first time was in 2004, when he became the youngest (22) to win in the his­tory of the com­pe­ti­tion. The golden belt is a sym­bolic award that remains in the pos­ses­sion of the win­ner for the fol­low­ing year.

Kara once again earned the title ​“başpehli­van,” or ​“head of the pehli­vans,” as the win­ner is known. The title orig­i­nated from the Persian word pahlavān mean­ing a war­rior or brave per­son, and is attrib­uted to the wrestler who wins the tour­na­ment. Recep Kara also received the first place purse of 40,000 Turkish Liras ($13,050).

During the time-out before the final wrestling match, there was an auc­tion con­cern­ing who the ağa of next year’s tour­na­ment will be. The old Turkish title ağa lit­er­ally trans­lates as a land­lord or mas­ter in a rural set­ting depend­ing on the con­text. For the Kirkpinar tour­na­ment, it sig­ni­fies the per­son who will spon­sor and host the event.

The mayor ini­ti­ated the auc­tion from 222,000 Turkish Liras ($72,432) which ended with the win­ning bid of 400,000 TL ($130,508) by a busi­ness­man Seyfettin Selim. The result was not sur­pris­ing to the view­ers as Selim has been host­ing the Kirkpinar since 2009 as the ağa with the excep­tion of 2014. He also men­tioned that he will donate an addi­tional 100,000 TL to the fam­i­lies of those who died dur­ing the events fol­low­ing the failed coup d’etat attempt by the mil­i­tary forces on the 15^th of July.