![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/sports.jpg\" "\\"sports\\"")
\u0130stanbul has been chosen as the 2012 European Capital of Sports and city officials say they will use this opportunity to make \u0130stanbul one of the healthiest cities in the world.<\/p>\nSEVG\u0130 KORKUT, \u0130STANBUL<\/p>\n
\u0130stanbul has been chosen as the 2012 European Capital of Sports and city officials say they will use this opportunity to make \u0130stanbul one of the healthiest cities in the world.<\/p>\n
A meeting for the coordination of activities to be carried out during the year was held on Thursday at the \u0130stanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s conference hall in S\u00fctl\u00fcce, \u0130stanbul. Youth and Sports Minister Suat K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7, EU Minister and chief negotiator Egemen Ba\u011f\u0131\u015f, \u0130stanbul Governor H\u00fcseyin Avni Mutlu and \u0130stanbul Mayor Kadir Topba\u015f as well as district mayors attended the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u0130stanbul will be given the title on Nov. 30, Minister K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7 announced, adding: \u201cBeing a European Sports Capital involves the concept of being a city where every individual is interested in sports. If we can grasp this emphasis well and do exactly what it necessitates, \u0130stanbul will become one of the healthiest cities in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7 noted that \u0130stanbul was preparing to host the World Athletics Championship next year in March. \u201cWe want to make sure that the 15 million residents of this world city that offers facilities to engage in various branches of sports as a sports capital also make time for sports in their personal lives.\u201d He said sports investments returned as savings in health spending.<\/p>\n
The minister also said it was important for Turkey every time \u0130stanbul hosted an international event. \u201cThe door to more comprehensive events will be opened, and it will remain open after this.\u201d He said to live up to the requirements of being a sports capital, \u0130stanbul will have to work with all of its institutions and civil society groups, noting that the ministry could not tackle such a task alone. He called on investors to become partners in the project.<\/p>\n
A flag transfer ceremony will take place in Brussels to initiate the city as the new European Capital of Sports, after which Mayor Topba\u015f and Minister Ba\u011f\u0131\u015f will bring the flag, which symbolizes the city’s title as the capital of sports activities, to \u0130stanbul from Brussels.<\/p>\n
During Thursday’s meeting, EU Minister Ba\u011f\u0131\u015f said the city’s title as sports capital should be treated as an opportunity to carry out projects to increase \u0130stanbul’s earthquake preparedness. He said many new sports facilities will be built in the city. \u201cThe earthquake in Van tore at our hearts, but there are great lessons to be learned from it. We could use the title of sports capital as an opportunity to prepare the city for an earthquake. There is no other \u0130stanbul and we will protect our \u0130stanbul and our country.\u201d He also said the country’s determination will earn it the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEVG\u0130 KORKUT, \u0130STANBUL \u0130stanbul has been chosen as the 2012 European Capital of Sports and city officials say they will use this opportunity to make \u0130stanbul one of the healthiest cities in the world. A meeting for the coordination of activities to be carried out during the year was held on Thursday at the \u0130stanbul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":46055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3996],"tags":[4380,102,4679],"class_list":["post-46054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","tag-european-capital-of-sports","tag-istanbul","tag-the-european-capital-of-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}