THE Council of Turkish Cypriot Associations shared a written statement about the Turkish Cyprus Culture Festival, which will be held this year.
Explanations were also made in regards to the alternative Cyprus Festival which will be held under the umbrella of the Turkish Community Football Federation Turkish and Turkish Cypriot Community Association.
“The 1st Turkish Cypriot Culture Festival held last year was successful despite many difficulties thus, the outcome has made us and all our people happy. The pioneering role of the Council, in this sense in particular, is to work with all associations and bring together our society… Unfortunately, since the Council is not a source of income, all efforts are made by us and our volunteers. If income comes from the next festival, it will be donated to a building foundation…
On June 17, the 2nd Turkish Cypriot festival will occur between 11:00 and 20:00 at Enfield Donkey Lane… We expect an even better success than last year in this festival area, which has about 2000 car parks.
In recent days there have been announcements on behalf of the Council members in the press, the social media, and the public. Therefore we would like to clarify this news.
The community centre and football federation did not provide any support to the festival last year when the Council had organised it. After a successful festival, Community Centre managers appreciated that we started something good for the community and offered to work with us at this festival. We have also stated that the Council’s objective of festivals is a social task and that a possible income from this should be spent for society… Unfortunately, they were not warm about joining the Council and expressed that they wanted to walk with the Football Federation…
After the preliminary negotiations that started in January 2018, our conditions were cast on the paper and agreed at the meetings held on 24 January 2018 and 15 February 2018 except for one item which was to reduce the number of Council members from 5 to 4 in the festival committee that was going to be established. We also declared that we will present this to the Council members as goodwill demonstrators. This agreement was signed by the Football Federation’s President Mr Serdar Sarı and we have this document.
We have stated that the Council is a roof organisation and that it is serving with 23 associations affiliated to it, and that the Community Centre is an association. Still, we sought to make compromises about not distorting these requests. However, the disrespect conduct towards the conduct has moved to such an extent that they have even attempted to change the name on the application form which we had made to the Enfield Council. Finally, we were disappointed to learn that they were preparing a festival a week earlier than we did. At the press conference they organised, our name was used without our permission. We are saddened by the fact that the original intention here is a material interest and an ego conflict.
As a council we are open to everyone which is willing to working with us, we are growing, strengthening and continuing with sure steps. We believe that those of us who are uncomfortable with this, and those who want to disintegrate this society for their personal interests, will receive the best and right answer from our public. “