President Erdoğan defined the meaning of true love.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke at the Culture and Tourism Ministry's Special Awards and Living Human Treasures Award Ceremony. President Erdoğan's words about love drew attention, stating that values on the verge of being forgotten survive through love.

PRESIDENT ERDOĞAN'S DEFINITION OF LOVE

Erdoğan said: "Our art style is one of the fundamental elements that enable us to be a nation, just like our way of life. For a thousand years, the touches made by calligraphers with their pens, by illuminators with their brushes, by masters with their hammers, and by poets with their plectrums have engraved the seal, spirit, and values of our nation into these lands. They say that to have an opinion about an art, you must know the nation that created that art. Arts such as calligraphy, illumination, marbling, talika, miniature, mother-of-pearl craftsmanship, tile-making, weaving, kısbet, kaval, tulum, and bağlama mastery continue to live and are passed down from generation to generation even in an age where communication technologies have taken over.

"LOVE IS THE ABSENCE OF THE PERSON IN WHAT THEY LOVE"

I believe the secret of this is as follows; many of our artist masters, who possess God-given talents, see that our values on the verge of being forgotten are kept alive through love. Love is the absence of the person in what they love. Not love like today. True love. I pray that our artists increase in number, and may we not experience their absence."