Ankara Cup little success for Turks, boost for country's image

The Ankara Cup, a professional women's tennis event first held in the Turkish capital in 2011, formally opened yesterday with 60 players from 24 countries participating. Organizers boast that the event is the latest sports event to prove that Turkey is not an unsafe place as some sports figures and teams make it out to be by cancelling appearances in the country. Most Turkish players lost to their foreign rivals in the first rounds yesterday.

Turkish Tennis Federation officials joined Turkish player İpek Soylu and 2015 tournament's Serbian champion Ivana Jorovic at a press conference in the capital yesterday, hours before the first rounds were held. Cengiz Durmuş, head of Turkish Tennis Federation told reporters that the tournament was a significant occasion to show Turkey's reliability as a safe country to host sports events. Durmuş said some 150 foreign players and athletes competed in international tournaments in the past 10 weeks in Turkey and the Ankara Cup was the latest to promote Turkey's image as a safe place.

Turkey was rocked by a string of terror attacks in the past two weeks that killed 58 people in Istanbul and the central Turkish city of Kayseri. A Romanian coach who signed a deal with the southeastern province of Gaziantep's football club has canceled his contract with the club after the Istanbul attack that targeted police officers while several German soccer teams that traditionally hold their training camps in southern Turkey cancelled off-season training this year because of a renewed campaign by the PKK terrorist group. Turkey stepped up security measures following the attacks while a nationwide anti-terror sweep saw the arrests of hundreds supporting the terrorist groups in previous weeks.

The Ankara Cup, with a championship award of $50,000 is a small-scale event in a country where tennis is less popular compared to soccer. Still, Turkey, especially in women's tennis, has achieved success in the past decade. İpek Soylu and Çağla Büyükakçay made a name for women's tennis with accomplishments in international tournaments.

Yesterday's matches were disastrous for Turkish players. Pemra Özgen, a 30-year-old who has 12 singles and 22 doubles titles on the ITF tour, lost to her Ukrainian rival Ganna Poznikhirenko 2-6, 6-3, 6-3. In the doubles category, İpek Öz and İrem Soylu were defeated in 6-2, 6-0 sets to Elitsa Kostova of Bulgaria and Cornelia Lister of Sweden. Mihaela Buzarnescu of Romania, Croatia's Ana Vrljic, Romania's Raluca Georgiana Serban and Poznikhirenko were the winners of qualifiers while Berfu Cengiz was dealt a crushing defeat by her Uzbek rival Sabina Sharipova. Ayla Aksu made it to the second round by beating her Russian rival Viktoria Kamenskaya 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

İpek Soylu and Melis Sezer managed to reach the quarter final by beating fellow Turkish pair Başak Akbaş and Deniz Paykoç 6-1, 6-1. The tournament will end with the singles final on Dec. 24 while the doubles final is scheduled for Dec. 23.