Turkvision Song Contest

The Turkvision Song Contest (TSC, Turkish: Türkvizyon Şarkı Yarışması), also known as the Türkvizyon Song Contest, has been a recurring song contest created by Turkish music channel TMB TV, inspired by the format of the Eurovision Song Contest. The first edition took place in Eskişehir, Turkey in December 2013. Countries and regions which were Turkic-speaking and of Turkic ethnicity were eligible to participate in the song contest. The contest was last held on 20 December 2020 as an online event hosted from Istanbul, Turkey. Several cancellations followed, and the future of the Turkvision Song Contest now remains uncertain.
According to an October 2013 statement on the official website Turkvision.info: "Turkvision is a new contest inspired of Eurovision song contest. While Eurovision focuses in European countries, Turkvision is a contest whose participants are mainly from Turkish countries or Turkish spoken countries." Turkvision was actually a song contest which was created by TÜRKSOY in cooperation with the Turkish music channel TMB TV. The participating countries and regions had to take part in the Semi Final. A juror from each nation awarded between 1 and 10 points for every entry, except their own. An amount of 12 to 15 nations qualified for the Grand Final where the jury determined the winner. TÜRKSOY stated that televoting would be introduced in the future, but this never took place.
Hosting of the Turkvision Song Contest took place in the country or region that also hosted the Turkic Capital of Culture instead of the previous year's winning country.
In November 2020, the official Turkvision website posted that they hoped to stage the 2021 edition in Shusha, Azerbaijan. This was confirmed in December 2020 by İslam Bağırov, the contest's general coordinator, though it was later revealed that the 2021 edition would be taking place in Turkistan, Kazakhstan. However, the 2021 contest did not materialize.
On 1 February 2022, the Uzbekistan Tourism Ambassador announced on Twitter that the 2022 contest would take place in the first week of June 2022 in Fergana, Uzbekistan. However, this did not materialize and TÜRKSOY stated that the contest will be moved to Bursa, Turkey and take place later in the year, but that didn't materialize either.
On 19 April 2024, Gunesh Abasova, Chairperson of the Turkvision 2020 jury and heavily involved in the contest since her participation in 2013, stated on social media that the contest is set to return in 2024. As part of a song release, she said that its music video would be premiered "at the large-scale competition Turkvision 2024".
Participants from Turkic-speaking and Turkic countries or regions were eligible to compete in the annual Turkvision Song Contests, such as Crimea, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Turkey.
Twenty-four countries and regions took part in the first edition of Turkvision. There were several unsuccessful attempts to participate in the Turkvision Song Contest. Chuvashia, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Xinjiang were one of the original twenty-four participating areas with initial intentions to competing at the 2013 Contest, but later withdrew for undisclosed reasons.
Russia's Omsk Oblast broadcast the 2014 contest, but they have never made any statement regarding participation. A delegation from another Russian federal subject, Kalmykia, attended the 2015 contest, but did not participate and have not made any subsequent statements regarding participation.
The following countries and regions had confirmed participation at previous editions of the contest, but either withdrew prior to their debut or the contest was cancelled before they could:
The table below shows the top-three placings from each contest, along with the years that a country won the contest.
The Bala Turkvision Song Contest was intended to be an annual children's version of the Turkvision Song Contest based on the format of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. Contestants had to be aged between 8 and 15 and had to perform in a Turkic language. Only one edition of the Bala Turkvision Song Contest took place, on 15 December 2015, and it included 13 countries and regions. It had been announced on 7 June 2015, that the inaugural Bala Turkvision Song Contest would be held in Mary, Turkmenistan, however, it was later decided that it would take place in Istanbul, Turkey, but it did not materialize and the contest disappeared without a trace. Eligible to participate were Turkic regions, which had either a large Turkic population or a widely spoken Turkic language. Participating countries and regions included Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Gagauzia, Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine. Azerbaijan was the winner of the event with the song "Cocukluk Yillari" performed by Nuray Rahman and Ahmed Amirli.
Media related to Türkvision Song Contest at Wikimedia Commons