The Turkvision Song Contest 2016 (Turkish: Türkvizyon Şarkı Yarışması 2016) would have been the fourth edition of the Turkvision Song Contest, and was scheduled to take place at the Yahya Kemal Beyatli Cultural Centre, in Istanbul, Turkey, and organised by TMB TV and Azad Azerbaijan TV.

Twenty-six Turkic regions, which have either a large Turkic population or a widely spoken Turkic language, had confirmed their participation in the contest. Dagestan, Kumyk, Latvia, Moldova, Netherlands, Poland, Stavropol Krai and Sweden were expected to be making their debut, whilst Altai Republic, Bashkortostan, Crimea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Moscow, Tatarstan, Tuva, and Yakutia were going to be returning after a one-year absence. Khakassia also initially planned to return to the contest and had selected their participant, but later withdrew from competing.

In February 2017, two months after the contest was supposed to air, it was announced as being cancelled, and Kazakhstan were announced as the hosts for the Turkvision Song Contest 2017 in Astana. The 2017 contest was also cancelled, and the contest was not held again until 2020.

Location

Antalya

Istanbul

Locations of the speculated host city marked in red. The actual host city is marked in purple.

In May 2016 it was announced by Subhane Isgenderova, the Azerbaijan Head of Delegation, that Antalya was going to be the host city for the fourth edition of the contest.[1] However, on 11 July 2016, it was later confirmed that the announcement made Isgenderova was in fact incorrect, and the official host city would be Istanbul.[2]

Venue

Had the 2016 contest gone ahead as scheduled the venue would have been for the second consecutive year, the Yahya Kemal Beyatli Cultural Centre, which has 10,000 covered seats of 30,000 seats at total in Küçükçekmece district of Istanbul.[3]

Format

Just like the 2015 edition, which had no semi-final stage because of the withdrawals from several Russian states from the contest due to the international relations between the Russian Federation and Turkey in 2015, it was announced that the same format would have continued at the 2016 edition.[4][5]

National host broadcaster

On 15 July 2016 it was confirmed that Turkish Music Box Television (TMB TV) would have been the host broadcaster for the second consecutive year, which would have been responsible for the organisation of the contest.[6]

Cancellation

On 8 December 2016, it was announced that the contest had been delayed until March 2017, marking the first time since the inaugural contest in 2013 that a postponement of the contest had occurred.[7] However, it was later confirmed that the 2016 contest had been cancelled for unknown reasons.[8] The contest was rescheduled to take place between 8–10 September 2017 at the Barys Arena, in Astana, Kazakhstan, but was cancelled again on 20 October.[9]

Provisional list of participants

Twenty-six Turkic regions, which have either a large Turkic population or a widely spoken Turkic language, had confirmed their participation in the contest, fifteen of which had selected their artist (nine of those having also chosen their song). Shir Charyev was announced as participating, although details as to which country he would have represented had not been disclosed.[10]

Region	Artist	Song	Language
Altai[11]
Azerbaijan[12]	Sevinj Bayaz[13]
Bashkortostan[11]	Zilia Bakhtieva[14]	"Donya Mathur"	Bashkir
Belarus[15]	Svetlana Agarval[16]	"Məni anla"[17]	Azerbaijani
Crimea[11]	Alseyda[18]	"Feleğimsin"[19]	Crimean Tatar
Dagestan[11]
Găgăuzia	Yulia Arnaut[20]	"Kemençä"[21]	Gagauz
Germany[22]	Seyran[23]		Turkish, German
Kabardino-Balkaria &  Karachay-Cherkessia[11]	Aris Appaev[24]
Kazakhstan
Kumyks	Daniyal Harunow[25]
Kyrgyzstan[26]
Latvia[27]	Oksana Bilera	"Yakışıyor bize bu sevgi"	Turkish
Moldova[28]	Polina Stefoglo	"Yallah Yallah!"[29]	Turkish
Moscow[11]
Netherlands[30]	Elcan Rzayev[31]	"Ana – Vətən"[31]	Azerbaijani[30]
Northern Cyprus[32]
Poland	Olga Shimanskaya[33]	"Masal Gibi Bu Dünya"[33]	Turkish
Romania[34]	Sunai Giolacai		Turkish
Sandžak[35]
Stavropol Krai[11]
Sweden[36]	Arghavan [sv]	"Dirçəliş"	Azerbaijani
Tatarstan[11]
Turkey
Tuva[11]
Ukraine[37]	Natalia Papazoglu[38]	"Tikenli yol"[39]	Gagauz[40]
Yakutia[11]

Other Turkic regions

•  Bosnia and Herzegovina – On 23 September 2016 Hayat TV, broadcaster of Bosnia and Herzegovina at Turkvision, said that they were still undecided about their participation in the 2016 contest.[41]

•  Khakassia – On 25 November 2016 it was announced that Khakassia would not participate in the 2016 contest. Despite this they did select their artist, Irenek Khan.[42]

See also

References

External links

• Official website (in Turkish)
• Official website (in Russian)