Director of the Museum and guests,

I am very pleased to be here today for a small, but I beleive is a necessary contribution to the Hergé Museum.

- I have to thank my wife, Zeynep Ersavci for discovering this wonderful museum and, Ms. Buket Uzuner, a well known Turkish writer and Tintin enthusiast for sending us the present Tintin book in Turkish.

- Actually the idea came up while my spouse and Buket spent a whole day in Hergé Museum, where they noticed the absence of a copy of “Tenten” in Turkish, among those displayed in many other languages.

- Indeed Tintin is very familiar to Turks and very popular since its first translation into Turkish in 1950. Like almost everywhere in the world, Tintin still remains one of the rare comic books that adults are happy to buy for children in Turkey as well.

- In fact, even before being translated into Turkish, Captain Haddock was using colorful Turkish expressions such as “Bachibozuk”.

- There is almost no doubt that if you ask to a Turk “who was the first Belgian he or she knew?” you will often get the answer “Tintin”.

- Thus, we can consider Tintin as an essentially important figure of our common culture with the Belgians.

- Today is even more special since this year is also the 50th anniversary of the first Tintin movie with real actors, released in 1961, which was set in Turkey:

«Tintin et le mystère de la Toison d'or” (Tintin and the Golden Fleece).

- Since that time Tintin didn’t go back to Turkey. So today we wanted to visit him here and to give him and his friends the best regards of his Turkish fans.

- I urge all tourists from Turkey that a visit to Hergé Museum in Leuven-La-Neuve is a must.

Thank you