Turkvizyon 2013. Photo TRT

It has now been a couple of years since Turkey took part in the Eurovision Song Contest. We at Eurovision Ireland have  certainly missed them and will do so again in Vienna next year. But this does not mean that Turkey have exactly been idle in the meantime.

Last year we saw the beginnings of a new song contest, Türkvizyon. The concept behind it was clear. It was created by TRT the Turkish Broadcaster who hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Istanbul in 2004. All the countries or regions that were invited to take part all had Turkic connections. So the idea was to bring together lots of Turkish communities from various places in Europe and Asia to take part in a Eurovision style song contest.

The inaugural contest took place in Turkey in the city of Eskişehir which happened to be the 2013 Cultural Capital of the Turkish world. The date was set for December 19 th for the Semi Final and December 21^st for the Final. 24 countries/regions took part in the Semi Final and 12 moved forward to the Final.

Azerbaijan were the first winners of the contest. Each country gave their jury votes in the arena as each spokesperson read them out live. Farid Hasanov with the song “Yasa” won with 210 points, while Belarus and Ukraine came 2^nd and 3^rd.

The 2^nd edition of Türkvizyon will be held in Kazan, Tatarstan which is the Cultural Capital in 2014. Tatarstan is a region in the east of Russia.

This year will see more new countries enter the contest like that of Germany. You can see the current list of participants HERE

More on this year’s contest in another article coming up on Eurovision Ireland.

Edited by Andrew James Main.

Source Eurovision Ireland.