Friday 10 / May / 2024
Istanbul: Many residents in a central district of Istanbul started to pour into an oasis-like park as soon as the working hour was officially over on Friday evening.
Like most of the others, the Pektas family was in a rush to catch the aerobic session in the Artists Park in the Etiler neighbourhood.
Esra Pektas, along with her husband and six-year-old daughter, chose a spot on the grass field where she could see the coach well enough to be able to follow the drills. For at least one hour, accompanied by some energetic music, she purely focused on her body.
Local authorities in the crowded district of Besiktas on the European part of the city have recently launched an all-out fight against stress that reached a peak due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
They decided to offer the residents yoga classes, meditation gatherings, concerts, and aerobic sessions to make them cheer up and free their coronavirus-related concerns.
"For almost four months, our people stayed at home due to the partial curfews imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, and as a result, many were traumatised," Riza Akpolat, mayor of the Besiktas municipality, told Xinhua.
He said people's anxieties over getting infected with coronavirus have also been continuously growing in the time of the easing of the COVID-19 measures.
After consulting with several specialists and talking to the residents, Akpolat's teams realised that most of the citizens needed psycho-social support. Therefore, they also assigned several psychotherapists to guide people on how to cope with their COVID-19-related concerns.
The programs start simultaneously at 5pm local time each Friday at six large parks across the district, all free of charge.
"Professionals have been leading the attendees in releasing their stresses and concerns through these activities," an official from the municipality's press office told Xinhua, noting that meditation sessions on awareness significantly help them to get relaxed.
Esra Pektas said that doing an activity together and feeling the group energy in the open air are extremely enjoyable.
"We do not miss any of the aerobic sessions since the start of July," she added.
Meanwhile, at another zone of the park, a lady in her late 70s, said she loved to listen to the live music performances.
"The quarantine was challenging for me and my husband, who is a kidney patient," she said, without giving her name.
"Now we can go out, but still we live in a state of fear. We cannot meet our friends due to the concerns about being infected. But at least, we come here and listen to some music," she noted.
When the music performance is over, the audience would directly go home, take a shower, and wash their clothes to get rid of all the viruses, she said.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has recently said that Turkey's biggest city Istanbul with a population of over 16 million accounts for almost 53 percent of the COVID-19 cases in the country.
Turkey launched a partial normalization period from the COVID-19 measures in the beginning of June and allowed the opening of restaurants, cafes, parks, beaches, and pools.
