Turkey: Falun Gong Is Warmly Welcomed at the Mersin Festival

The 2005 Mersin Festival, organised by the city government of Mersin, was held on September 17th. Located in southern Turkey, Mersin is famous for its fruit and known as the “Home of Oranges”. Turkish Falun Gong practitioners were invited to attend the festivities. They drew a lot of attention from the festival participants and became the most prominent focus of the festivities.

Practitioners performed a group demonstration of Falun Gong’s five exercises on the stage. Accompanied by Falun Gong’s peaceful and elegant music, practitioners’ gentle, smooth movements attracted great attention from the crowd. The entire square was enveloped in a tranquil and exquisite atmosphere. People were deeply intoxicated by the elegance of the movements and traditional-style Chinese music. Their performance won loud applause and praise from the crowd.

Reporters from local TV stations and newspapers who provided news coverage of the Mersin Festival showed great interest in Falun Gong practitioners and Falun Dafa. The event and Falun Gong practitioners’ exercise performance were videotaped by Sun TV, a major TV station in Mersin. The video was treated as a news focus and broadcast twice a day throughout the subsequent week.

Practitioners’ efforts to introduce the practice at the Mersin Festival received unreserved support from the local government. To express its support to Falun Gong, the city government of Mersin, which has been providing enthusiastic support and help to Falun Gong in the past year, prepared colour fliers and large banners reading “Falun Dafa” and “Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance”. To facilitate practitioners in introducing the Fa and teaching the exercises, the city government designated an area specifically for Falun Gong practitioners.

As night fell and the festivity came to an end, people still hovered around and wouldn’t leave. People who wanted to learn Falun Gong exercises and understand the truth of the persecution kept pouring in. Falun Gong music was aired again and again and lingered in the night.