Concerns about terrorism continue to place winter sports tournaments in Europe in an alarming state and force the continent’s Olympic Committee to plan an emergency meeting to consider moving to the Winter Olympics. Winter European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) hosted by Turkey.

AFP quoted a statement by the European Olympic Committee (EOC) that the organization is closely monitoring the host country ‘s security for the winter sports festival for young athletes.

The final decision on the continuation of the Erzurum Province (Turkey) to organize the event (taking place from 11 to 18.2) will be made after the meeting between the EOC and the Turkish Olympic Committee on January 26 arrived in Lausanne (Switzerland). “The safety of athletes on the event is our top priority”, the EOC said in a statement today 4.1.

A series of terrorist attacks in Turkey put winter sports events in a red alert state AFPChia shared a series of terrorist attacks in Turkey that put winter sports events in a state of red alarming.

Security concerns at the EYOF event (expected to have 1,500 athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 competitions) are currently in a state of “red alert” after a series of terrorist attacks in Turkey, in which The latest is a gunman shooting 39 people at the nightclub Reina (Istanbul) on the first day of 2017. Previously, in December last year, a car bomb exploded in the city of Kayseri (where lies Erzurum 640 km to the west) killed 13 people and injured 50 others.

The Islamic State terrorist organization (IS) has been accused of carrying out attacks. According to Reuters, only in 2016, IS had four terrorist attacks on Turkey after the country took military action to repel the terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, in the face of terrorism concerns, the British Olympic Committee (BOA) has reassured the athletes with a statement fully believing in security measures at EYOF. BOA said that the threat of terrorism is not only a concern for winter sports but also for summer sporting events as well as other tournaments around the world.

Last year, the curling world championship (ice ball on ice) was also removed from Erzurum due to the threat of terrorism and transferred to Copenhagen (Denmark). This year’s EYOF event was originally hosted for Sarajevo but was later exchanged with Erzurum (winning the bid to host EYOF 2019) because Bosnia said it had no time to prepare infrastructure and organization.