We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your intense interest and participation in our Turkish Heritage Day event, which we celebrated on September 28th.

We would like to express our gratitude to our Consul General, Mr. Resul Bey , Hollywood Commissioner Caryl Shuham , and all our guests for their support at our event, which attracted over 200 participants this year.

Our event was officially declared Turkish Heritage Day with a proclamation signed by Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis . We are delighted to celebrate this historic milestone with our community.

Our FTAA Ataturk Choir, FTAA Folklore Group, Sarı Zeybek (Sarı Zeybek), Hacivat-Karagöz (Hacivat-Karagöz) performance, ceramics, tile, and marbling art workshops, belly dance presentations, and our sarma and kadayıf recipes were met with great interest. The enthusiastic participation of our children and the activities in our children’s corner further enlivened the event. We were delighted to see the enthusiastic consumption of all the dishes, desserts, ice creams, and baklava we prepared and served.

I would like to thank my colleagues on the FTAA Board of Directors, the Head of our FTAA Atatürk Choir Beyhan Ermiş, our Chief Şenay Koçak, and all my friends in the choir who contributed to the success of our event; our saz master Sinan Taşan, who participated in our event with his beautiful folk songs; Hasan Kochan, who gave a successful performance on the kemence; FTAA Folklore teacher Aslı Yeniyol and all my friends in the folklore team who participated in the show; Emre Erol, who successfully performed the Sarı Zeybek play; Albert Helmann, for his excellent performance in the Hacivat-Karagöz shadow play; Esen San, who successfully introduced the art of ceramics and tiles; Sabri Tosunoglu and Canan Akın, for their beautiful performances in the Ebru art workshop; Sema Akçay, for her successful presentation in the sarma-making workshop; Murat Bakan, for his beautiful presentation of the kadayıf recipe; Armağan, for his successful performance in the children’s corner and for his comprehensive speech about the Atatürk school. A huge thank you to Bakılı, Nathali for her amazing belly dance performance, and Anıl Çakır for his support during the video shoot and online presentation. And a huge thank you to Camila for her professional presentation, which made our day even more special.

We would like to thank our sponsors, Mado Ice Cream, SignX (Oguzhan Celik, Canan and Ihsan Akin, MineTahaoglu), PSN Consulting (Fuat Ornarli), Citir Doner, Turkey Driving License School (Ersoy Ingecoglu), Taytac Insurance Service (Mehmet Yilmazcoban, Gülsay Hanım), Dr. Ziya Celik, Hesna Aksehirli, Ayşegül Colak, and Dr. Tülin Oz for their support in making our event a success.

I would like to thank all my volunteer friends whose names I cannot list here and who worked with great dedication throughout the event. Thank you very much for your efforts.

With your support, we will continue to preserve and promote our Turkish culture, and pass it on to future generations . We look forward to seeing you at many wonderful events together.

A sincere thank you to all our friends and acquaintances who participated and supported our event

Dr. Hatice Hasman

FTAA President

On behalf of the FTAA Board of Directors