Turkish BASE jumper to fly from Istanbul’s Galata Tower to Üsküdar

ISTANBUL

BASE jumper Cengiz Koçak is scheduled to fly from Istanbul’s Galata Tower to Üsküdar on Oct. 28, in an attempt reminiscent of the legendary 17th century Ottoman aviator Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi.

As a part of the European Outdoor Film Tour (EOFT) event, which will be held on Oct. 28 for the first time in Turkey apart from EU countries, Koçak said the flight is the first step of the project dubbed “second Hezarfen flight from Galata Tower will be repeated after 385 years.”

He said he would initially jump from the 35-meter tower and open his parachute at 33 meters and eventually land on the Küçük Hendek Street adjacent to the tower in a method that has never been tried before.

Koçak added that he will conduct five other jumps across Istanbul and many spots across the country that has never experienced any jumping challenge.

The seventh and final leg of the project will be completed with a flight from Galata Tower to the Üsküdar district just across the Bosphorus, Koçak said.

“The excitement of this work is that there is a possibility that I might crash into the Bosphorus waters and measures will be taken against this. If I fail in my first attempt, I will try for a second and a third time,” he said.

Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi was purported in the writings of Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi to have achieved sustained unpowered flight from Galata Tower to Doğancılar Square in Üsküdar with an approximate glide path distance of 3.3 kilometers.

The event, which will be broadcast live on YouTube, will also see extreme sports activities in 10 different iconic spots across the country, including Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey and the Sümela Monastery in the Black Sea province of Trabzon.