With special thanks to Ertuğ Akkol and Seval Altuğ.
Photography by Zeynel Bilge Göze.

Turkey is one of the up and coming countries in the European go scene and has a solid base of young, enthusiastic players and organisers. The Alpar Kılınç Memorial, for example, is among the biggest go tournaments in Europe. It is named after the founding father of Turkish go and takes place yearly in December in the city of Ankara. In 2018 the 25th edition of the Alpar Kılınç Memorial counted 203 participants, sharing second place for largest number of players in the European Go Database with the Kido Cup in Hamburg.

Each year around November/December, the Turkish Go Players Association (TGPA) gathers event details from local go organisers in the country in order to define next year’s Go Activities Calendar. These events mainly consist of general tournaments open to the public, but the calendar also includes go camps, women tournaments, pair go championships and competitions for children. TGPA’s ultimate aim is to encourage as many people as possible to join these events and create a positive environment for the improvement of the level of Turkish go players. In this respect, the go scene in İstanbul has contributed significantly to the development of go in Turkey: announcing tournament schedules in advance, facilitating registration for go events online, providing attractive prizes, inviting professional players to events and introducing city tournaments are some examples.
Besides İstanbul and Ankara, the most active go cities in Turkey are İzmir and Eskişehir, and there are also tournaments held in Adana, Bursa and Çanakkale.

It is the aim of the Turkish Go Players Association that several special tournaments, such as the Turkish Women's Go Championship, the Turkish Pair Go Championship and the Turkish Play-off Tournament, are to be handled by a different city each year. This stimulates a positive competition among the different organisers in the country.
It was the İstanbul Go Players Association that took the responsibility to arrange both the 2018 Turkish Play-Off Tournament and the 2019 Turkish Women's Go Championship.
Finding appropriate venues for large or prestigious tournaments, however, can sometimes prove to be difficult and stressful. And so it is all the more surprising when the venue comes to you! Whilst intensively looking for suitable places for both tournaments, the İstanbul organisation was approached online by someone who claimed to be the owner of a restaurant located in Akmerkez, a high-end shopping mall in the city: he offered his restaurant as the location for a go event. It was a really suspicious situation and the organisers even feared that – being aware of the 2019 TGPA Go Activities Calendar – this individual was trying to make fun of them!
After some investigation online, the person that approached them seemed to be very real, but there did not seem to be a relationship between the company that he worked for and Akmerkez. Finally, a face to face meeting was arranged and it turned out that everything was okay. After all the suspicion a great venue had presented itself to the İstanbul go organisation on a golden platter.

Eventually, both tournaments were organised at the same place, restaurant Take a Seat in the Akmerkez shopping mall, and also at the same time, as a kind of two-in-one tournament, during the weekend of 2-3 February. The restaurant was so kind to even offer discounts to the participants and organisers for their food and drinks. Korean 7 dan player Lee Kibong was invited and provided live commentary of the matches on a magnetic demonstration board. The European Go Federation and the European Go Cultural Centre sponsored the events with 10 copies of the 2016 European Go Yearbook and a copy of Go with the Flow by Cho Hunhyun.

The Turkish Play-Off Tournament is held each year to select the Turkish representatives for the World Amateur Championships KPMC and WAGC. To qualify for the Play-Off Tournament, players can accumulate points by participating in Turkish tournaments throughout the year. The class and number of dan-players in each tournament affect the amount of points one can collect. After the season is over, the eight players with the most points collected will battle in the Play-Offs.
The players that collected the most points in 2018 were: Tuğkan Eren (2 dan), Eren Kurter (1 dan), Özgür Değirmenci (4 dan), Uğur Arıkan (1 dan), Birand Adal (2 dan), Doğaç Köse (1 dan), Hataycan Özgür (1 dan) and Çağlayan Duman (1 dan). They came together in restaurant Take a Seat in February 2019 to battle for the two coveted spots.

Three rounds were played, and all twelve matches were covered live on KGS.
This year's Play-Off was highly competitive. One of the two spots to represent Turkey in Asia was already taken: the Play-Offs themselves also work with a point system in which points can be accumulated over years, and Birand Adal had been piling up his stash for a while. The final game of the tournament between Eren Kurter and Tuğkan Eren would directly determine the second lucky duck to claim a trip overseas and thus also who would have to wait to fight another day.
After the first 86 moves, a large group of Tuğkan Eren died in the bottom left corner, but he declared the wish to continue playing. After another large struggle, it was the same fate that befell his opponent: a big chunk of stones of Eren Kurter perished in the bottom right corner. Even though according to Leela Zero it was still Eren who was leading the game with a 87% winning percentage, he was not aware of this and resigned the game out frustration. Tuğkan Eren earned the chance to represent Turkey at the Korea Prime Minister's Cup for the first time! Since Tuğkan chose to participate at the KPMC, Birand Adal was left with a spot at the WAGC, his second time to represent Turkey at this World Championship.

Simultaneously, the 2019 Turkish Women's Go Championship unfolded in the same room of restaurant Take a Seat. A total of 30 female go players fought for the national title of Turkish champion over 5 rounds of play. This was not only the highest number of players ever in the Turkish Women's Championship, which has been held yearly since 2014, but also the fifth highest ever when we look at women's tournaments on a European scale. A massive achievement!
The players' ranks ranged from 20 kyu to 1 dan, hailing from four cities: İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Bursa. Main thinking time was 60 minutes, with an additional Canadian byo-yomi of 25 stones in 10 minutes.
The favourites to win the championship were defending champion Seval Altuğ (1 dan), who won the Turkish Women's Go Championship thrice in a row since 2016, and Hülya Çolak (1 kyu), who was the first to win the championship back in 2014.

After the first day, four players won all three games: Seval Altuğ (1 dan), Hülya Çolak (1 kyu), Arzu Demir (8 kyu) and Süeda Güleç (8 kyu) topped the table. It was likely to come down to a final between Seval and Hülya, a match-up that always provides a fierce fight on the go board, a worthy spectacle to watch. They faced each other in the fifth and final round, their struggle broadcast live on the Kiseido Go Server. In an exciting match that went back and forth, Hülya managed to stage an upset by resurrecting a dead group during a ko fight and subsequently killing a group of her opponent. Hülya Çolak was Turkish champion again, her second title since 2014! Seval Altuğ took the silver, with burning motivation to regain the title again next year. She was followed by Arzu Demir (8k) on third place, who is known for her calm playing style, her third consective bronze medal since 2017!

Additionally, a prize for Fighting Spirit was awarded to Hande Olgar (6 kyu), who did well to end on seventh place and nearly defeated Serap Suleymanoğlu (4k), champion of the 2019 İstanbul Women Go Championship, only to lose by 1.5 points.

Final results of the 2018 Turkish Play-Off Tournament: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T190202A
Final results of the 2019 Turkish Women's Go Championship: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T190202B

Want to go to a Turkish go tournament? Check out the 2019 Turkish go calendar! http://www.tgod.org.tr/genel-tr/2019-etkinlik-takvimi-2