{"id":176594,"date":"2026-08-21T03:39:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T03:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/176594\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T03:39:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T03:39:03","slug":"17th-annual-calgary-intercultural-festival-a-celebration-of-community-and-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/176594\/","title":{"rendered":"17th annual Calgary Intercultural Festival: A celebration of community and culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 17th Calgary Intercultural Festival was held on Aug. 15, 2026 at the Dalhousie Community Association in the northwest area of Calgary. Initially called the Turkish Festival, the name was changed after COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Fatih Sezgin, co-lead organizer for the festival, has been involved with the event for 10 years and said that community involvement continues to grow every year.<\/p>\n

\"\"PHOTO: COURTESY OF CALGARY INTERCULTURAL FESTIVAL\/FACEBOOK<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need this festival for the unity of our community because everyone is trying their best to contribute something. The festival is going be for two days, but when you think of the preparations, it is three months. So every weekend, the women of the community come together and plan everything ahead of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fatih added that the festival has continued to grow over the last 17 years with people from a multitude of countries and cultures helping to run the event setting up live performances and food services.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo far, we have hosted more than 40 countries, and just in these two days we are going to have around 17 different countries such as the Philippines, Japan and also Scotland and Mexico. It\u2019s open to every community because we want our people to realize that they are living in a diverse country, in a diverse city while bringing the spirit of Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The festival occurred on Aug. 15 and 16 and over the weekend, bands and singers showcased their talents to show appreciation and pride in their culture and countries. PHOTO: MJ JORGE<\/p>\n

Ayse Sezgin, Fatih\u2019s wife, is also co-lead organizer who\u2019s been part of the event for nine years and said the focus of the event is celebrating our differences with one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing opportunity to get to know people from different backgrounds. Even if we think that we are different, according to our beliefs, we are not that different. We have a lot of similarities and this is probably one of the most attractive things about this festival.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ayse added. \u201cYou actually get to know people better, spend some time with them and you see that the world is not really that different than yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"PHOTO: COURTESY OF CALGARY INTERCULTURAL FESTIVAL\/FACEBOOK<\/p>\n

She noted that Calgary and the organizations around the city deserve credit for extending resources and helping for the festival on a year-to-year basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re already connected with many local organizations like Calgary Interfaith Council and Calgary Alliance for Common Goods. So we are already working on a lot of projects together. We are trying to support them, trying to contribute to their projects in our way to be able to make Calgary better. It feels interconnected and makes me feel like I belong here. This is my country, this is my place.\u201d<\/p>\n

She emphasized that no matter what culture, religion or country you belong to, living in peace and building connections with people is the priority in hosting the festival and related activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only message I want to give people is peace. We don\u2019t want wars, we don\u2019t want people to fight over things, we don\u2019t want dictators. We are humans. We are all humans. We worry about the same things, we become happy about the same things, we have a lot more in common than we can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"PHOTO: COURTESY OF CALGARY INTERCULTURAL FESTIVAL\/FACEBOOK<\/p>\n

\"\"PHOTO: COURTESY OF CALGARY INTERCULTURAL FESTIVAL\/FACEBOOK<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

Report an Error or Typo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 17th Calgary Intercultural Festival was held on Aug. 15, 2026 at the Dalhousie Community Association in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[164,51,1942,413,1445,423,389,167],"class_list":["post-176594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-alberta","tag-calgary","tag-community","tag-culture","tag-festival","tag-food","tag-music","tag-yyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}