Having faltered in its bid to host the 2020 Olympics, it remains in question whether Turkey will make another Olympic bid in the immediate future.
Turkey’s Minister for Youth and Sports, Akif Cagatay Kilic, addressed the question if a follow-up bid for 2024 or beyond will happen.
"That decision has not yet been taken," Kilic told journalists at SportAccord 2014 in the Mediterranean resort of Belek. "We still have some time to look into the process ... that we went through with the IOC. I think we should take our time to make our decision about how we should act in the future."
Had Istanbul won the campaign for 2020, Turkey would have become the first Muslim country to host the Games and, with a median age of less than 30 years, one of the youngest.
Istanbul lost to Tokyo, 60-36 in the final round of voting in September at the 125th IOC session in Buenos Aires.
IOC president Thomas Bach said on Thursday that a future Istanbul bid "would be welcomed by IOC members."
"The vote in Buenos Aires was not a vote against Istanbul, but a vote in favor of Tokyo," said Bach.
Kilic said the next issue is convincing those members that Turkey is the right choice.
"We have some ideas of what might have been better, but the general thing is to look into the whole process why we have not been able to persuade some of the [IOC] members to be in our favor," said Kilic, who assumed his new role as Turkey’s sports minister last December.
Kilic dismissed the notion that student protests in Istanbul last March were the reason for the failed bid.
"I don’t think that Istanbul and Turkey had any disadvantages as a city and a country to host the Games compared to the other [bid] cities," Kilic stated.
Kilic emphasized the importance of keeping Turkey’s youth involved with and playing sports.
"The population of Turkey is very young and in the near future, 20 or 30 years, it will stay young," said the 37-year-old leader.
"The main objective here is to get your young people to participate in these sport events. The Turkish population - the young population - is very passionate about sports," Kilic said.
"From an infrastructure and facility point of view, we are doing an enormous amount of work now," he said. "By next year, I think we will have surpassed 1,000 facilities, big and small, that have been built in the past few years.
"We have created a preparation process for the Olympics in the future," Kilic explained. "I think we should be seeing some results by 2016 and 2020, definitely 2020."
Asked by Around the Rings if Istanbul is destined to host the Olympics, Kilic responded, "Istanbul is a city with a long history, a unique city in the world, and it would be in the Olympics favor to be in Istanbul, and not just the other way around. That is my personal view.
"If the decision is made to move ahead, we will seek it."
Written in Belek by Brian Pinelli
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.
Últimas Noticias
Utah’s Olympic venues an integral part of the equation as Salt Lake City seeks a Winter Games encore
IOC president tells Olympic Movement “we will again have safe and secure Olympic Games” in Beijing
Boxing’s place in the Olympics remains in peril as IOC still unhappy with the state of AIBA’s reform efforts
IOC president details Olympic community efforts to get Afghans out of danger after Taliban return to power
North Korea suspended by IOC for failing to participate in Tokyo though its athletes could still take part in Beijing 2022
