29th Annual NYC Turkish Day Parade: No Parade in 2010

This year’s Turkish Day Parade will be held only as a festival in Manhattan’s Dag Hammarskjold Park on Sunday, May 23.  Different than every other year, there will be no parade this year. The festivities in Dag Hammarskjold Park will start at 12:00 noon on Sunday and several prominent singers from Turkey will take stage during the festivities. Among the special guests from Turkey, there will be the Turkish national soccer team, Turkish and Azerbaijani folk dance troupes, pop singer Kenan Dogulu and the Ottoman military band (Mehter Takimi).

Turkish Day Parade usually takes place on the third or the fourth Saturday of every May, however, it was rescheduled to Sunday this year, as the Turkish national soccer team was scheduled to play against the Czech Republic team on Saturday, May 22nd. The parade part was then canceled, as Sunday, May 23 is the designated day for the Israeli parade, and it was instead planned as a full day festival in the Dag Hammarskjold Park in Manhattan. The city doesn’t allow more than one parade on the same day in Manhattan for security reasons.