Niyazi Kurt has been the president of Turkish Federation since 2011 and with the last election his presidency time will be until 2020. There were 125 voters but 118 people used their votes and 114 of them was to Niyazi Kurt. With his fair and succesful presidency Niyazi also got the support of the body builders even though he has armwrestling background.

 In the past the presidents were from body building side and were not allowing big armwrestling teams to European and World Championships. But the last 5 years Niyazi did not allow only big armwrestling teams but also big body building teams to the international championships. During the last years both armwrestling and body building championships in Turkey became much better organisations than how they were before and the number of the participants increased two times more than before.

 Since it is originaly body building federation more service is done to body builders than armwrestlers as federation is financed mostly by the body building trainer courses. So there are every year two body building nationals with medals and trophies to the winners while only one nationals for armwrestling with medal award only. We armwrestlers are happy with it as this way the peace is kept in the federation. We all are the children of the same nation and all we want is to keep our youth in the gyms, does not matter if armwrestling or body building.

 Niyazi has been part of the armwrestling world for 27 years as his first World Championships was in 1989 Greece. He has won 2 times Worlds and 2 times Europeans in the past. During his presidency Turkish team won hundreds of medals in WAF and EAF events. Only in 2016 Turkish team won 62 medals at EAC and 34 medals at WAF. As a senior team i can not say that we are very successful but promoting the junior armwrestling in Turkey will hopefully give its results in senior classes in the coming years. Still Oguzhan Kocak, Arif Ertem and Esra Kiraz are the ones who are succesful in senior classes.

 We will be hosting 2018 World Armwrestling Championships in Turkey and this will be the first time ever. We have hosted two European Championships in the past (2000-2011) but never a World Championships. Hopefully it will be an unforgetable event. Our President Niyazi Kurt has great plans about it and i am sure that he will be succesful. I have known him for about 25 years and i know that he loves armwrestling so much and he has dreams to fulfill as an organisor as well. I expect a great organisation with great trophies and medals for the athletes. I have been part of the sport for a quarter of a century and i know what makes the Champions happy. A nice Trophy and a medal will be a great memory to remember the success. We Turkish Federation will be welcoming World of Armwrestling to our great nation with an honour.

As being his close friend I congratulate Niyazi Kurt once again for the elections that he won.

Engin Terzi