Turkey came to a standstill at about 11 p.m. Saturday [Sept. 7]. Like Turks all over the world, we were all waiting for the news. On that day, Turkish Airlines broke its longest nonstop flight record of 13½ hours between Istanbul-Los Angeles by flying 16 hours nonstop between St. Petersburg and Buenos Aires. It flew Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with his wife and daughter, from the G-20 Summit to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting in Buenos Aires. Erdogan went to lobby for Istanbul to be selected as host city of the 2020 Summer Olympics. He addressed the IOC to vote for Istanbul and apologized to his wife and family for his “love for Istanbul and sports.’’

There was optimism in Turkey that they would get the good news. Istanbul’s historical Sultanahmet Square was packed with people at about 11 p.m. in front of giant TV screens transmitting live from Argentina. No doubt that had the news come as ‘’Istanbul 2020” there would have been jubilation. Everything was ready for it.

Actually, such optimism was not misplaced. Istanbul was a candidate for the Olympics for the fifth time, and it had never been so close. It had only Madrid and Tokyo remaining as rivals. Spain was having a tough time with its economic crisis. Moreover, Barcelona had hosted the Olympics as recently as 1992. Tokyo was assumed to be preoccupied with cleaning the traces of the environmental disaster at Fukushima nuclear power station that is recognized as the second worse environmental nightmare, only 155 miles away. Tokyo had already hosted the 1964 Olympics. Istanbul, the only city that links Europe and Asia, would have been the first Muslim host of the Olympics. Everybody felt that this truly magnificent and unique city that had served as capital of two empires in history deserved it.

All the Turks who preceded Erdogan to Buenos Aires, from the Istanbul mayor to the minister of sports to the Turkish Olympics Committee members and everybody else, had agreed: "Istanbul will win because it deserves to."