Balkans; Heritagisation; Ottoman Empire; Tourism; Turkey; Wrestling;

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84870460250&doi=10.1080%2f09523367.2012.721597&partnerID=40&md5=6c734a03a8b22e50a12544a8b6548b8a

10.1080/09523367.2012.721597

The Kirkpinar oil wrestling festival in the Turkish town of Edirne on the European side of the country close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders has been inscribed in 2010 in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the UNESCO. Although this physical activity has originally a Greek-Byzantine tradition, the annual event is crowned by the victorious emergence of the so-called Champion of Turkey. In the summer of 2012, the athletic meeting of some 1500 wrestlers took place supposedly for the 651th time. Hence it is said to be the oldest continuously practised sports contest on earth, thereby dwarfing the Olympic Games. However, in the course of especially its younger history throughout the long twentieth century, there are various changes in this for many reasons (re-)invented tradition. Based on field research and especially a range of Turkish sources, this article traces oil wrestling as an imperial Ottoman practice and depicts its embeddedness in wrestling lodges and palaces; it highlights the role of modern show wrestling, that even staged Terrible Turks, and problematises the Republican process of Turkification, the sports-oriented corset of the modern Turkish Wrestling Federation and the system logic of heritagisation.