Living Heritage in Türkiye in 2026: Kırkpınar, Crafts and Exhibitions of Local Memory

[TURKIYE]

Living Heritage in Türkiye in 2026: Kırkpınar, Crafts and Exhibitions of Local Memory

Edirne opened the 665th Kırkpınar in July with its ceremonies and music. In August, living heritage featured in an exhibition in Ordu, while programmes in Mersin and Nevşehir brought workshops and museums into the cultural season.

Living heritage becomes visible when people put knowledge handed down to them into practice and give it a place in their lives today. It might take the form of a call delivered in a wrestling arena, clothing made to its wearer’s measurements, a movement learnt by an apprentice, or a technique introduced to a new audience in a local exhibition. These activities differ from preserving an object in a case, even when the object itself is an important part of the story.

Events in 2026 offer ways to explore this idea in cities beyond Istanbul. In Edirne, sporting competition came together with civic ceremonies, oral expression and music. In Ordu, an exhibition explicitly devoted to living heritage formed part of a cultural programme’s opening. Meanwhile, the workshops announced in Mersin and the activities in Nevşehir raise a practical question: how can audiences move from looking at something to understanding the knowledge that makes its creation or performance possible?

A Barana folk ensemble from Dursunbey, Balıkesir. Undated archive photograph for illustration.

Edirne on 3 July: Opening the 665th Kırkpınar

Kırkpınar opened on 3 July 2026 with formal ceremonies at Sarayiçi after Friday prayers. Coverage described the wrestlers’ procession, the movements of the peşrev, the cazgır’s calls and prayers, and the music of the davul drums and zurna. Orhan Okulu, champion of the previous edition, raised the flag.

The festival week ran from 29 June to 5 July, with the wrestling competitions scheduled for 3–5 July. The distinction matters because the festival encompasses activities beyond the bouts themselves. The date on which competition opens does not, on its own, tell readers when all the surrounding ceremonies and performances take place.

The opening on 3 July illustrates how cultural reporting can also consider what happens before the contest. There is a procession from the city to the arena, an introduction of the participants, and a rhythm that helps give the occasion its structure. These elements do more than decorate a sporting event: they carry names, roles and relationships bound up with its particular way of presenting itself to an audience.


The sporting dimension nevertheless remains real, with its own contests and results. A heritage perspective does not diminish the effort and training involved or turn every wrestler into a performer playing a part. It adds an awareness of how the contest intertwines with inherited traditions, and of participants whose work never appears in a list of winners.

The Cazgır: A Voice That Knows the People and the Arena

The cazgır introduces the wrestlers, calling out their names and titles with words and prayers delivered in a distinctive style. Accounts of the festival’s heritage describe this role as encouraging the participants and introducing them to the public. They also link learning the craft to a relationship between master and apprentice.

Knowing about this role changes how a visitor understands the voice they hear. It is more than an automatic announcement of two names: it is a performance that draws on knowledge of wrestling and its community, and on a command of language and rhythm. The speaker therefore carries part of the arena’s memory, connecting specialist experience with those who have come to watch.

Here, the value of oral heritage becomes clear. Particular phrases may remain familiar, but delivering them in a live setting calls for judgement about the moment and a response to the people present. A recording can preserve a voice without necessarily recreating the relationship between the speaker, the participants and the audience. Practice matters because it gives the words a function within the event, beyond their survival in a file.

Recognising the name of this role also directs attention towards those who work around the wrestlers. The festival depends on a network of performance and organisation, extending beyond a contest between two people. Watching the musicians, announcer and wrestlers’ assistants reveals how much knowledge and work allow the central spectacle to begin and continue.

The Kıspet: A Craft Shaped around the Wrestler’s Body

The kıspet is a special leather garment worn in oil wrestling, extending from the waist to below the knee with closely fitting legs. Its production is described among the crafts associated with Edirne, with tailoring that takes account of the wrestler’s measurements, the garment’s components and its function in the arena. This is background to a craft that supports the festival, rather than an announcement of an invention in 2026.

The kıspet shows how practical use and skilled craftsmanship come together. The garment must fit a person who moves and engages with an opponent, so its outward appearance alone cannot explain how it is made. Leather, thread and measurements become practical knowledge held by the maker, whose value the wearer understands during competition.

Attention to this craft opens a window onto a wider chain of people. There is the wrestler seen by the public, the craftsperson who made the garment he uses, and perhaps an apprentice learning the trade. Their roles have different levels of visibility, but they are connected. Cultural reporting can help bring into view the work behind the moment of applause.

An old garment displayed in a museum can reveal a shape, material or trace of wear, while a practising maker can explain the choices involved in selecting, cutting and sewing. Preserving the object and practising the craft serve complementary forms of knowledge; neither fully replaces the other.

Peşrev: Movement before the Bout

Peşrev is a sequence of movements performed by wrestlers before a contest, combining physical preparation with a ceremonial meaning recognised within the tradition. Descriptions of its background include steps and gestures towards the ground and the body before wrestling begins. These movements featured in the 2026 opening alongside the music and calls.

This sequence makes the beginning itself part of the spectacle the audience awaits, rather than having everything start with the first grapple. The preliminary movements introduce spectators to a physical language associated with the arena and give the participants time to enter the rhythm of competition.

Spectators need not all understand each movement in the same way to notice its presence. A practitioner may know a detail that a visitor encounters for the first time, while a child may recognise the shape before learning its name. Naming the movement and explaining where it belongs can establish the beginnings of shared knowledge, while preserving the distinction between watching a performance and mastering its practice.

That distinction also shows why passing on heritage depends on more than an annual display. Public performance makes knowledge visible, but practice, correction and experience sustain it between occasions. A festival may bring experienced practitioners and apprentices together, without a brief visit becoming a substitute for learning.

A Week That Brings Together Different Parts of City Life

The announced Kırkpınar programme included a welcome for the ağa, Ufuk Özünlü, ceremonies in the city and a visit commemorating deceased wrestlers, alongside musical performances during the week. Concerts by Emir Can İğrek and Melek Mosso, and a programme of 1990s Turkish pop, appeared on different days.

This structure combines the competition with a wider civic occasion. One person might come for the wrestling, another for the music, and a third because they have felt connected to the event for years. The same week therefore allows several ways to participate, without implying that everyone attended the same activities or shares the same relationship with the tradition.

Contemporary music surrounding an inherited practice also places heritage in the present. A programme can maintain familiar ceremonies while including new material for a different audience. Assessing the balance requires an understanding of how these parts are organised, rather than an automatic judgement that every modern addition erases an identity or that every repetition preserves it.

Traditional percussion spoons displayed at the Musical Instruments Museum in Nilüfer, Bursa. Archive photograph for illustration.

Ordu on 22 August: Heritage in an Exhibition

Ordu’s Culture Route programme opened on 22 August 2026, with a run scheduled until 30 August. The opening included a visit to the Living Heritage: Ordu exhibition at Taşbaşı Cultural Centre. Here, inherited traditions took a different form from those in Edirne’s arena: an exhibition whose contents visitors could spend time considering and connect with the city’s name.

The announced programme also included an exhibition by Ordu Olgunlaşma Enstitüsü, the city’s institute for traditional arts and crafts, about bearers of cultural heritage, alongside workshops and other activities during the season. The word “bearers” directs attention towards the people who sustain knowledge through practice, as well as the objects they produce.

An exhibition creates room for explanation and comparison, while a live performance offers an experience of sound, movement and time. Visitors may see a detail in an exhibition that would be difficult to notice in a crowd; in the arena, they may understand a relationship that a static object cannot convey. No single format can therefore present every kind of heritage adequately.

In Ordu, the local setting adds an important dimension: heritage is presented under the city’s name, within one of its cultural institutions. This connection helps keep knowledge rooted in its surroundings, even when the occasion belongs to a large national programme. Understanding what is particular to Ordu remains more useful than assuming that everything on display represents all parts of Türkiye in the same way.

Mersin and Nevşehir: Workshops as an Introduction to Knowledge

Mersin’s announced programme included a felt workshop on 16 May 2026 at the State Fine Arts Gallery. Felt provides a useful example of the difference between looking at a material or finished product and discovering how to work with it.

In Nevşehir, official coverage documented the Culture Route programme’s opening on 1 August, with activities, workshops, children’s programmes and exhibitions scheduled through to 9 August. Güray Museum in Avanos also featured in the preparations. Together, these examples bring an established cultural institution and seasonal activities into a programme offering several ways to encounter art and craft.

Placing a workshop alongside a museum shows how differently each can make knowledge accessible. A museum can present works, a history or a collection, while a workshop can bring participants closer to the steps involved in making something. Learning a craft generally requires repetition beyond that first encounter, however. “An introductory experience” is therefore more accurate than a claim that attending a session has created new craftspeople.

Children’s programmes can also begin with something simple: the texture of a material, a movement of the hand, or a question about how an object is made. That beginning deserves attention in its own right, without being assigned a distant outcome that cannot be measured in a day. The encounter’s value may lie in awakening curiosity; the continuation of that knowledge depends on opportunities that follow.

Different Forms of Heritage in the 2026 Programme

Place	Occasion	Form of participation
Edirne	Kırkpınar opening on 3 July; competitions on 3–5 July	Live performance, sport, music and oral expression
Ordu	Culture Route opening on 22 August	The opening included a visit to the living heritage exhibition
Mersin	Felt workshop listed for 16 May	An announced programme offering a practical introduction to a craft
Nevşehir and Avanos	Opening of the 1–9 August programme	Workshops and museums within a local cultural programme

Knowledge Passes between People, as well as through Images

This year’s examples bring together several roles: wrestler, announcer, musician, garment maker, workshop leader and exhibition visitor. Each contributes a kind of knowledge. Some can be described in words; some require performance, experience or repeated observation.

Photography can help people remember the form of a movement, object or place, but cannot alone convey everything a practitioner knows. Hands learn through experience, an announcer needs a sense of timing, and a maker judges measurements and materials. The relationship between the person who holds knowledge and the person learning it is therefore central to understanding heritage, alongside preserving tools and documenting occasions.

There is also a difference between the knowledge offered by a presentation and that held in an archive. An archive may help people compare a garment or movement across different years, while a live encounter reveals how it is used in present circumstances. Bringing the two together offers a fuller understanding of a tradition: a historical image cannot explain every subsequent change, and a current performance cannot account for every earlier stage.

This relationship places a responsibility on those presenting objects and roles: to explain their functions and settings, and give the practitioner a place in the story. When a kıspet appears with an explanation of its use, or a visitor learns the cazgır’s name and role, the knowledge becomes clearer than it would through an object or sound encountered without context. These small details connect current news with history and give readers an introduction they can build on after the festival ends.

Kırkpınar has appeared on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2010, but recognition does not mean freezing a practice in an image from a single year. The event can live in 2026 through its present participants, programme and places while retaining its historical connections. That continuing life becomes visible in the details documented, rather than through a general claim that everything has remained unchanged over time.

From Edirne to Ordu, Mersin and Nevşehir, following heritage becomes more rewarding when it involves asking what work people do and how it is presented to an audience. Here, inherited traditions meet the city of today, and a celebration, exhibition or workshop becomes an opportunity to see knowledge at work before us, beyond a title pointing towards the past.

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