Turk Wrestling Australia IncTurk Wrestling Australia Inc was formally established in 2001, after the Sydney Olympics, under the leadership of its first president Mehmet Latif Sagol, to encourage Australians of Turkish descent to participate in sporting forms of wrestling. With a population of nearly 40,000 scattered across every major city in Australia and with a strong tradition in several styles of wrestling, it was determined that Australian Turks could contribute to make wrestling a more popular pastime in Australia, therefore strengthening the competition circuit. Built on an earlier foundation of Turkish wrestling clubs established in the Western Suburbs of Sydney in 1975, Turk Wrestling Australia Inc has produced numerous Australian champions and international representatives for various styles of wrestling and plan to continue to do so long into the future. For more information about the Wrestling Heroes of Central Asia see this PDF attachment The land which is encompassed by the modern nation of Turkey has produced some of the oldest artwork in the world depicting the sport of wrestling. A famous bronze statuette, known as the Khafaji Bronze, was unearthed from the ancient Sumerian city of Tutub near what is now Baghdad in the 1930s. Dated at nearly 5,000 years old, it depicts two wrestlers gripping on to each others belts while balancing large vases on their heads. If the historian Mohamed El Fers is correct then these vases may be symbolic that the wrestlers were actually covered in olive oil, demonstrating that oil wrestling is truly indigenous to the region. Today yagli gures, as oil wrestling is known in the Turkish language, is the most popular expression of traditional wrestling in Turkey, with hundreds of thousands of wrestlers participating in tournaments across the country. There are also several references in Hittite sources that describe how wrestling was often used as a votive offering done before large statues of the gods in ancient times, so the sport has always held an element sacredness in the region. The Hittite word for wrestling was Hulhuliya but they often used another synonym, Kit Palu that sounds very similar to the Greek word used to describe the sport. The researcher David Chibo has put together a compelling argument that major athletic tournaments were held for thousands of years throughout the Near East by Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Hittite people during the month of Arah Abu in August. Because of the popular epic poem that may have inspired this he calls them the Gilgamesh Games and believes they came to inspire the ancient Greek Olympiks in the 8th century. You can read more about this at his website; http://www.gilgameshgames.org Although many people assume that modern Greco-Roman Wrestling is the descendant of the style of wrestling practiced during the ancient Greek Olympik Games, this is a misnomer because Greco actually evolved from traditional Southern French wrestling in the 1840s, known as lutte a main plat and has no connection whatsoever with either ancient Greece or Rome. It was only called Greco-Roman wrestling with the creation of the modern Olympic movement to identify it with the Classical period, but gullible people still believe this propaganda. Yagli gures on the other hand is still practiced in regions where the ancient Greeks held their gymnic agon, or naked games, as the sporting festivals were known and their style of wrestling, called orthopale, has many parallels to yagli gures. During wrestling events held in the ancient Olympik stadium and several other sporting venues across the Hellenic world, palaistis or wrestlers would rub olive oil into their skin before competing, just as the pehlivan still do in yagli gures. Of course there are several differences between the two sports as well. Victory in orthopale was determined when the opponent was either thrown flat on his back three times in one match, known as a triakter, or was lifted and carried out of the wrestling arena, while in yagli gures the idea is to bring the opponent to the ground and turn him over so that his belly is exposed to the sun, or lift and carry him for five steps in any direction. The other major difference is that orthopale was done completely naked, with clothing actually forbidden, while yagli gures follows a Muslim sensibility and has the pehlivan wearing special leather trousers called kizpet, but after nearly 1500 years since the last official Olympik Games, it wouldn't be surprising that the sport followed its own evolutionary path, seeing the rise and fall of both the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. The biggest yagli gures tournament, with 1,000 wrestlers and a television viewing audience numbering in the millions, is held each June in the ancient capital city of Edirne and is known as Kirkpinar or the Festival of the Forty Springs. According to Turkish mytho-history, during a military campaign by the Ottoman Sultan Orhan Gazi in 1346, an elite force of 40 warriors layed siege to several cities in what is now Greece and after conquering them set up camp on the Ahir Koy Meadow in what is now Bulgaria. As a form of entertainment for the other troops, two of these warriors began a wrestling match early in the morning that still continued until late at night, after all the all the other warriors had retired for the evening. At dawn the next day the others rose to witness a grisly site, because neither would concede, the two warriors became exhausted during their fight and they were locked still on their feet in a motionless death embrace. They were then buried under a fig tree but when the other warriors returned a year later to pay tribute to their colleagues, they found a miracle had happened on the site of the wrestling match, 40 underground springs had miraculously appeared to water the area for habitation. From then on a commemorative wrestling festival was held on that spot until forced to move to Edirne after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Because of this passion for wrestling, Turkey has a very enviable record for wrestling in international events and is considered one of the strongest nations to compete in either the Olympics or FILA World Championships. International wrestling styles such as Greco and Freestyle are referred to as minder guresi or mat wrestling in Turkey while traditional wrestling sports are called cayir guresi or meadow wrestling because they are done on grassy fileds. Karakojak is another style that is very similar to yagli gures in that competitors wear special trousers to assist in holds and throws but it is done without the covering in olive oil. Kusak gures or belt wrestling is mainly practiced by the nomadic Tatar tribes of Eastern Anatolia (originally from Crimea) and is closely related to similar sports played throughout the Turkic speaking world, from Kyrgyzstan to the Russian Republic of Tartarstan. Another popular spectacle is camel wrestling but this form of beast fighting does not fit in with the the other events described here so enough said. Kisar Salvar gures is a style practiced by the Turkomen people in Kahramanmaras province in which competitors grab onto big baggy shorts similar to Swiss schwingen. Aba gures or vest wrestling is the style practiced in the southern regions of Anatolia on the Mediterranean coast in Hatay province, in Gazientep Province and across the Syrian border. You can read more about the history of this sport in the Pan Celtic Wrestling pages of this site. Turk Wrestling Australia Inc has a desire to encourage the development of all these sports as well as the Olympic styles but its strongest emphasis is in the yagli gures. Outside of Turkey oil wrestling tournaments are also held in Thrace and Serres provinces of Northern Greece where the sport is called palema, in Macedonia and Bulgaria where it is called maslo borba and remarkably since 1996 in the Netherlands and Switzerland in Western Europe. Demonstrations of yagli gures were also done in Japan in 2008 and at the 649th Kirkpinar in 2010, the Japanese Ozumo Rikishi, Akino Mine, travelled to Turkey with an official contigent from the Nihon Sumo Kyokai to do a special competition against against the pehlivan Ahmet Tasci, to the fascination of the spectators the world over who saw yagli gures for the first time compete against sumo. Yagli gures tournaments have been held during Turkish Festivals in Auburn in Western Sydney since the mid 1970s. There are indications of shows held in Gladstone Park Melbourne as early as 1972 but information on this is limited, it is historically verified however that the Turkish Wrestling Club was established in Sydney in 1975. One of the great wrestlers from this era was Pehlivan Hasan Yilmaz who was the coach of the Turkish Wrestling Club at Leichhardt Youth Centre and president of the organisation for its first five years. His boys did extremely well in State, National and even World Championships, bringing many medals and trophies back to the club but when they did yagli gures performances it was always in front of huge crowds, sometimes with over 10,000 spectators. The son of Hasan, Pehlivan Zafer Yilmaz, actually travelled to Edirne in Turkey in 1989 to compete in the Kirkpinar, the only Australian wrestler to date to achieve this goal. In 1996 the private school Sule College began its education program in Liverpool in South Western Sydney, with a strong engagement from the Australian Turkish Community and the physical education teacher Cevdet Avcuogullari began encouraging the boys at the school to get involved in wrestling. In many ways Cevdet has continued what Pehlivan Hasan Yilmaz began and a whole new generation of Australian Turks are now becoming strong wrestlers. Turk Wrestling Australia Inc plans to hold further yagli gures shows and hopes the sport will be embraced by other Australians outside of the substantial Turkish Community. In 2011 they appeared on the TV Show "Australia's Got Talent" and have performed at several multi-cultural festivals in Sydney and Melbourne. They have established a regular training venue at the Auburn Gallipoli Mosque and invite any wrestlers from any tradition to come over and test themselves. Please contact me at this site if you would like to learn more or check out the website; http://turkwrestlingaustraliainc.com/index.html |
