Korkut Ata Turkic World Film Festival, which was held for the first time last year, presents itself as a ground to protect our values that make up our great geography, to get together the Turkic world in the cultural field, and to talk about the new concepts on behalf of the Turkic nations.

Korkut Ata, who carries the mental and conscientious sensitivities of the Turkic nation centuries ago to the present day, has been the host of generations who have adopted their national, moral, humanitarian, spiritual and cultural values. Korkut Ata Turkic World Film Festival is of great importance for us in this sense.

In terms of revealing the unity of the countries, it is very valuable that we have a universal common identity in strengthening and sustaining the human values of the future. The festival reached an international level with the participation of the Organization of Turkic States and communities speaking Turkish and its dialects from other regions. While the bond formed from the heart was established in the cultural field, the ground was prepared for everyone to meet on the basis of the same civilization with the unifying feature of culture and art.

The 2nd Korkut Ata Turkic World Film Festival is an honor for us as it is the only film festival where feature-length and documentary films from Turkic republics and communities will compete.

The fact that approximately 50 most selected films from the Turkic world cinema, with their competitive and non-competitive sections, will meet with the festival audience, will contribute positively to the preservation of film culture and the formation of an internationally unique film language.

I hope that this step taken with Korkut Ata Turkic World Film Festival will serve as a memory for future generations, and I believe that it will contribute to the nourishment of the art of cinema in our country from this accumulation and source.

My thanks to everyone who contributed.

The crane bird, the symbol of Korkut Ata Turkic World Film Festival, teaches us to be one, to be together again, and tells us that we meet in a common cultural heritage even though we have gained a place in different geographies. Korkut Ata Turkic World Film Festival, which we organize for the second time this year, brings together films and guests from 17 different geographies, including ten countries and seven autonomous regions, in a festive mood. This time, it is held with great enthusiasm in Bursa, which is a very important settlement on the Silk Road route in the historical sense, and has been selected as the 2022 Turkic World Capital of Culture. In addition to being a valuable commercial center, Bursa is also the city of our spectacle shadow play Karagoz, thus establishing an artistic bridge to cinema, which is the contemporary language of expression.

In the light of Dede Korkut’s stories spanning centuries, which have extremely cinematographic characteristics, the signs of what kind of characteristics the common cinematic language of the countries that make up the Turkic world can have, are seen. This year, the festival  meets with moviegoers with the theme of ‘Nature’, taking into account the common cultural and civilizational heritage that exists among the Turkic world, with the strength that historical unity has given us on this journey. Starting from Nevruz, which is one of the most obvious symbols of the integration of human-nature and which is perceived as the common festival of this wide geography, the four vital elements consisting of air, water, fire and earth appear as the most fundamental natural characteristics in the art of cinema and integrate human existence with the meaning of creation.

The festival, which aims to create this integration in the field of cinema cooperation among the societies that make up the Turkic world, carries valuable clues on how to establish a cinematic narrative within the framework of language, content and social values. In this sense, I would like to congratulate and extend my love to everyone who contributed to Korkut Ata Turkic World Film Festival, which aims to create a more lively cinema environment with co-productions between countries and to pave the way for film circulation.