The World Ethnosport Confederation (WEC) is an international institution engaged in activities that aim at increasing and spreading awareness of traditional sports and games. The headquarters of the Confederation, which was established in 2015, is in Istanbul. By supporting traditional games and sports that are passed down from generation to generation for preserving, performing, and maintaining these activities, the institution aims to bring these activities to a more permanent and systematic state by means of an umbrella organization.
Some of the priorities of the Confederation are to gather traditional sports worldwide under a single institutional roof, to establish unity and solidarity between member federations, and to expand and mature the Ethnosport understanding. Additionally, organizing all types of sport, social, and cultural activities in the Ethnosport field and cooperating with other institutions and organizations who work in this direction are among the main objectives of the confederation.
WEC aims to have the traditional sports expressed by the word “Ethnosport” and the cultures associated with these be universalized again in our day. WEC’s goal is to pass on to future generations the wealth that is carried by the values that have emerged through the life experiences of societies and communities throughout history and that have taken the most ideal shape by passing through the filter of time.
Ethnosports work to transfer many elements such as the hunting, combat techniques, prowess, clothing, and food culture of the past to future generations through sportive and cultural activities in light of the knowledge and experience that history has carried to the present.
WEC’s Mission
Nations are manifestations of the common past and accumulations that bind individuals together. Traditional sports and games are one of the most important elements of these accumulations and common past. Yet in our age, traditional sports and games are facing the danger of extinction. If no preventions are taken, the uniformization that extremely massive modern sports and games have caused will force traditional sports and games onto a course it can’t turn back from. This course first poses the threat of minimizing and impoverishing the diversity of traditional sports and games and then of destroying them completely. From this perspective the important responsibility of protecting, developing, and conveying this common culture of nations and humanity to future generations has been placed upon us.
WEC, which views the preservation, development, and maintainability through various activities of traditional sports and games passed down from generation to generation as a social responsibility based on the reality that each branch of traditional sports and games has its own internal value, sees the need to be organized at all levels (local, regional, national, and global) in the field of sports and games. While on one hand an institution centralized under a single roof is considered necessary for regulating and popularizing traditional sports and games, on the other hand it is necessary for ensuring cooperation and standardization among organizations at various levels. WEC has emerged as a result of these evaluations.
Based on these assessments, the mission of the World Ethnosport Confederation is to develop, apply, monitor, and assess innovative strategies for the purpose of regulating, popularizing, professionalizing, and universalizing traditional sports and games in order to struggle against the inequality in cultural and sportive opportunities among societies.
WEC’s Vision
WEC, which aims to convey solidarity while competing, peace while having fun, and past accumulations while professionalizing through the tool of traditional sports and games, possesses the vision of becoming an internationally recognized authority in the field.
WEC does not consider traditional sports and games independent of top social objectives. WEC additionally views revealing the best talents, the relaxation that adds value to life, and the professionalization of today’s individuals in terms of mental and physical health through contemporary sports and games as necessary, just not enough. WEC views these traditional sports and games and association with the higher purposes that will contribute value as needed in order to be sufficient. In this context, the following are seen as historical and social responsibilities in performing traditional sports and games:
Because of this, WEC aims to add quality to individual and social life through traditional sports and games by transforming the perspective on sports and games into solidarity within competition, peace in fun, and the quest to construct the future within the past.
