The undeniable fact that Turkish youth don’t find out about their sports activities historical past in main college or highschool has at all times been a deep frustration for me. Even although Turkey has a wealthy sports activities tradition, it’s not often talked about in historical past or bodily schooling lessons. Turkish youth develop up with out realizing who laid the foundations of sports activities within the nation. Selim Sırrı Tarcan, whose title is sadly forgotten in Turkish sports activities tradition, was one of the pioneers of Turkish sports activities. He was the primary particular person to symbolize Turkey, again then Ottoman Empire, within the rising International Olympic Committee (IOC), connecting Turkish sports activities with the remainder of the world. He can be thought-about the founder of volleyball and boxing in Turkey.
Born in 1874, he studied in Galatasaray High School, the oldest highschool within the nation, like many different gifted youngsters. He then graduated from Mühendishane-i Berr-i Hümayun (The Imperial School of Military Engineering) and directed the sports activities division in Servet-i Fünun journal. Using the contacts of his French lecturers at Galatasaray High School, Tarcan managed to fulfill with Pierre de Coubertin. Coubertin, the founding father of the trendy Olympic Games and IOC, wished Turkey to enter this new sports activities system as effectively.
Following Coubertin’s invitation, Tarcan wished to ascertain the primary National Olympic Committee, however because of strict laws stopping the formation of any sort of committee, he simply served because the IOC consultant. After the second constitutional period within the Ottoman Empire, he established the primary National Olympic Committee of Turkey in 1908 and have become the primary Turkish member of the IOC. In the 1908 Summer Olympic Games in Sweden, Aleko Moullos, the primary Olympic athlete of Turkey with Greek origin, represented the nation in gymnastics.
After the Olympic Games, he stayed in Sweden and studied bodily schooling for 2 extra years. He returned to the nation in 1911, the identical 12 months the Ottoman Empire turned formally the 13th member of the IOC within the Budapest session. He returned to Turkey with notes of “Tre Trallande Jantor,” a Swedish poem which turned the well-known “Youth Anthem” in Turkey. Starting from 1913, he began to put in writing a column for the Turkish sports activities journal “İdman” and continued writing there for 31 years.
After World War I, Turkey was taken out of the IOC and banned from the Olympic Games. In 1919, because of the efforts of Tarcan and Pierre de Coubertin, Turkey was reaccepted to the IOC. Tarcan continued to function the chairman of the National Olympic Committee of Turkey till 1930. Until his dying in 1957, Tarcan wrote 58 books and printed hundreds of articles to develop Turkish sports activities. He was a chief instance of how a lot a person may obtain with nice dedication. If we wish to construct a brand new sports activities tradition in Turkey, Turkish youth have to find out about figures like Tarcan to broaden their imaginative and prescient.
