Antalya's Expo 2016 opened Friday with hopes that the six-month food-themed world fair will be a catalyst for a tourism industry revival in the southern Turkish province, located on the Mediterranean Sea coast, Anadolu Agency reported.
The official opening ceremony for the expo held Friday night with the attendance of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoglu and other international guests, Trend informs.
"Together with Turkey, 53 countries, from 4 continents, have put innovation, art, technology and imagination at the service of the beauty and the poetry of gardens," Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales, secretary-general of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), which oversees the major world expositions.
"Their gardens reflect the cooperation, the goodwill and the commitment of the international community to protect, to preserve and to enhance the diversity and the promises of nature," Loscertales said.
Loscertales said that visitors will not only experience the beauty of nature, but they will equally enjoy a wide range of cultural programs and activities -- music, dance and other performances from around world -- that will transform the Expo site into a festival.
