There are currently 4 regionals in Turkey, holding up to 125 teams with an average of 1-2 events every season. There are a lot of teams competing in US regionals, because of the lack of regionals, and also to visit the US. I think a district in Turkey would be perfect. Since all the current regionals are in Istanbul, a district in Istanbul would be perfect! Also, there would be more Turkish teams going to the championship, without the cost of traveling 8k kilometers to join a regional, and then getting eliminated and just going back.
You should request that from your local FIRST delivery partner.
We had the same situation in Israel a few years back. It came from the teams and with cooperation from the local FIRST delivery partner it was possible.
An interesting idea would be combining districts of Israel and Turkey because it is so close but I don’t think it will happen due to political issues.
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Close? It’s farther than most distances in FIT, the largest district in the US.
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Yeah, to this point I checked for the “centers” of the two regions. Turkey is very built around Istanbul, Israel more spread, but with higher concentration around Tel Aviv. Istanbul and Tel Aviv are ~700 miles apart, so while possible, it would be challenging to run a merged district (not to mention the political issues yarden brought up).
Closer than any other FIRST region
Adding onto this, the centers for the PNW district is the Seattle and Portland Metro areas, which are a mere 150 miles apart. We are probably about average sized for a district. And 700 miles is quite a bit more than that.
@AlexBurchard would probably appreciate some help setting a district system up…
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I surveyed the teams a few months ago, they were 50/50 50 - lukewarm for districts, 50 more or less significantly against them. I was kinda surprised, I figured there’d be more support for districts. But while Venues cost what they do, and we don’t have high school gyms, districts aren’t feasible in Türkiye.
And teams don’t compete in the U.S. because there isn’t enough room in Türkiye, they compete in the U.S. because they want to travel. If Turkish teams indicate they want to compete in Türkiye in a timely manner, we find a way to make it work. Even when they tell us in an untimely manner, “oh we wanted to go to the U.S., we planned to go to the U.S., but it’s February 15th, and we didn’t get visas, or our fundraising didn’t quite pan out”, or whatever, we find a way for them to compete in Türkiye. (Before the pandemic I was begging teams to cancel their US plans and just compete in Türkiye, because it was pretty clear that events were going to be cancelled, so that they would get to compete that season, and still they wanted to compete in the U.S.)
Additionally, there’s 32 teams from outside of Türkiye signed up to attend in Türkiye this year. Those teams would be left out by a district system in Türkiye, plus
While Türkiye heavily focuses on İstanbul, (94 of 139 teams) making teams from Çorum and Mersin and Diyarbakır travel twice in a season, would likely cause some of them to fold. We are trying to expand outside of İstanbul, not castle up within it.
We went looking even harder for alternate venues this year, and there are almost no usable venues for a proper FRC Regional / District event. The ones that do exist, want like $35,000-50,000 per day nowadays because, they can.
If we look at state venues, those have a high risk of getting kicked out 1 month before the event, because the state decided they wanted to do something else (That has happened to us, though I suppose the teams don’t know that).
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Out of pure curiosity, what are these cost estimates inclusive of? Those numbers are well within many U.S. regional venues costs per day, unfortunately. If you factor in F&B, I’d venture that at least as many regionals are in that range as opposed to out of it.
It’s stupidly expensive, absolutely, but not far from what I expect a lot of places to cost.
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That includes access to the building. In Many cases it doesn’t even include cleaning and electricity, those are additional. It’s normal for regionals, which is why regionals don’t multiply quite like districts can, districts solved venue costs with high school gyms. Also, considering purchasing power parity puts 1$ in the US more or less equivalent to .33¢ in Türkiye, you should expect it to cost about a third in Türkiye.
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You are really right. Last year we registered for Orlando Regional with 7444. Everything was ready, but about 2-3 weeks before the competition, we could not get permission from the school (due to the regional directorate), we immediately contacted FYF and they helped us register for the Bosphorus regional, even though there was a little time left before the competitions.
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All Turkish teams competing in the US regional competitions prefer the US just for traveling. So far, I have not seen any Turkish team going to the US just for the regional competition. The main reason for this is that the mentors in the teams use the students as if they value them for their personal interests. Their only goal is to go to the USA 
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I don’t know if you’re at liberty to discuss, but I’d be fascinated to learn how the regional support fee and costs covered by FIRST vary internationally (i.e. is your support fee more, less, or the same as U.S. events, do you get the same support and materials as U.S. events from HQ, etc.). These economics are so interesting.