Togay Bayatli, president of the Turkish Olympic Committee, said Tuesday that there should be no politics in sports and that any boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games would fail.
"There is no politics in sports," Bayatli said at a press conference two days before the Beijing Olympic flame parades in Istanbul, the only city in the world located on two continents -- Asia and Europe.
"There are people around the world who don't know well about sports. If they knew better about sports, if they loved sports, they would not talk about a boycott. The Beijing Olympic Games is for sports," Bayatli said.
He said athletes around the world have been preparing for four years and they are eager to compete at the Beijing Olympic Games in August.
There have been two boycotts in the history of the summer Olympic Games, namely, the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, but both failed as the games were both successfully held, Bayatli said.
The Olympic or sports family is against any boycott, and this is the signature and answer of the Olympic movement, he added.
Bayatli made his comments in response to media reports that a few politicians and organizations in the West had threatened to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games.
Istanbul will hold the second leg of the Olympic torch relay Thursday. The first leg of a 21-city global tour outside China's mainland will be staged in Kazakhstan's biggest city Almaty Wednesday.
The 2008 Olympic flame was ignited on March 24 in Ancient Olympia in Greece and was handed over to Beijing on March 31 after a six-day relay in the Mediterranean country.
The relay will cover 137,000 km before the flame returns to Beijing and enters the National Stadium on Aug. 8 for the Olympics' opening ceremony.
(Xinhua News Agency April 2, 2008)