No: 196, 8 July 2015

The World Heritage Committee of which Turkey is a member, agreed at its 39th session held on 28 June-8 July 2015 in Bonn that the 40th session of the Committee in 2016 will be hosted by Turkey. Turkey has also taken over the Chairmanship of the Committee today (July 8) and Ambassador Gürcan Türkoğlu has been named as the Chairman of the Committee.

The World Heritage Committee, responsible for the implementation of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972, which is one of the fundamental conventions of UNESCO in the field of culture, is tasked to promote cultural and natural sites of outstanding universal value considered as common heritage of all mankind, to raise the consciousness of communities to claim this heritage and to take the necessary measures for the revival of cultural and natural values destroyed for various reasons. The Committee, in this context, also carries out the work related to the World Heritage List, on which fifteen sites from Turkey are inscribed and which renders visible UNESCO and the Convention of 1972 before the international community.

The 40th session of the Committee will be held on 10-20 July 2016 in Istanbul.

The city of Istanbul, which has a unique identity with its historical background that spans centuries and multicultural structure, will be an ideal host in terms of human values defended by UNESCO which transmit the world heritage to next generations and promotes intercultural dialogue.