Turkey Develops Chess At Fantastic Speed

28 September 2010, Khanty-Mansiysk – Ali Nihat Yazici, President of the Turkish Chess Federation gave a press interview recently and talked about Turkish plans to bid Istanbul as host of the next Chess Olympiad in 2012. Looks like chess olympiads are hosted once every two years, I maybe wrong but that is what I gather from this news item. Besides Turkish plans of hosting, Ali Nihat Yazici talked about the chess in schools program in Turkey and how chess has picked up speed in schools.

Here is part of the interview for interested readers of the interview with Ali Nihat Yazici on the chess development program in Turkey:

CHESS AT SCHOOLS

– Everyone knows that chess in Turkey develops at a fantastic speed. Can you give us some numbers?
– Of course. 2.25 million children have learnt chess in the last 5 years in primary schools. We have around 200 000 members of federation, 50 000 trainers. Federation budget was 6.5 million Euros in 2009, sponsorship was more than 1 million last year. We are planning to double these, numbers in the next 2- 3 years.

– Does the program Chess at Schools work in Turkey?
– Yes.

– How did you manage to prove usefulness of teaching chess at schools?
– We did some research in internet and made several presentations, then adopted this information for our country and brought it to the attention of the government. Our goal is to develop the intellectual level of students and make them more competitive in their future life. We don't necessarily want raising grandmasters and champions. But by adding value with marketing chess in the country we make money and we achieve all aims for a federation.

For me, it is most amazing. I wish this sort of program could exist in our Malaysian schools program and allow our young chess players to develop and be groomed for future Grandmasters-to-be.

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