ESDC 2016
November 16, 2015
Dear Debating Community,
As the conveners of the 6th Eurasian Schools Debating Championship (ESDC), on behalf of
our school, the American Robert College of Istanbul, and the Robert College Debate Society,
it is our great honor to invite you and your school to participate in ESDC 2016.
This year, the tournament will take place between 31 January - 6 February 2016.
For the past five years, our tournament has continued to serve as an environment where
students from all over the world have had the opportunity to express their opinions, debate
about world issues, and make friends from different cultures and backgrounds. As the 6th of
its name is being organized this year, the Eurasian Schools Debating Championship
continues to be special for being the first Eurasian schools championship ever organized, the
first international schools debating championship to take place in Turkey, and the first
completely student-run tournament. The tournament’s objectives are to achieve excellence in
debating, to encourage debating throughout the world and to promote international
understanding.
The competition will follow the World Schools Debating Championships (WSDC) format and
all debates will be conducted in English. The series consists of 8 preliminary rounds, knockout
rounds (starting with octo-finals) and the Grand Final. As an open tournament, we cannot
pre-emptively measure the ability of a debating team; in the interests of sake of equality,
fairness and more competitive debating, ESDC will follow the power-pairing format. There will
be quota of 50 teams in this year’s tournament.
Teams should arrive in Istanbul the 31st of January 2016 and depart on the 6th of February
2016. The debates will take place in our school campus, Robert College, overlooking
Bosphorus. The participants will be accommodated in a 4-star hotel: the Grand
Hotel Halic. There will be transportation from the hotel to the venue and back every day.
Each team must include a minimum of three to a maximum of five debaters. To ensure high
quality competition; we also require each delegation to bring an “n” number of adjudicators to
the tournament, one for each team. If the delegation can't meet this requirement, they will be
required to pay an extra 200 € fee per missing adjudicator.
Experienced adjudicators can apply for subsidies on their registration fees, for which they will
be required to submit a brief CV for the tournament’s CAP to evaluate. Adjudicators can send
their applications to eurasiandebate2015@gmail.com.
We believe that transparent adjudication and experienced judges are some of the most
important aspects of an enjoyable tournament experience. So, we have invited Mr. Kip
Oebanda from Philippines and Ms. Kallina Basli from Greece to be the Chief Adjudicators
(CAs) for this year’s tournament. The rest of the Chief Adjudication Panel (CAP) are all worldrenowned adjudicators: Mr. Scott Ralston, Mr. Alex De Jager, and Ms. Aisha Ahmad.
The registration fee for the tournament is 220 € per person. This is the same for debaters,
adjudicators and observers.
The fee includes 5 nights’ accommodation in the hotel with breakfast, transportation, lunches,
and other tournament expenses.
For the collection of fees, we will require 70 € of the registration fees for each person to be
sent via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) to a bank account owned by our school, Robert
College, whose IBAN number will be announced at a later date. Please note that the EFT fee
has to be paid by your delegation. The payment of multiple registration fees with one
transaction is fine. Please check the tournament’s website and the email addresses you state
on the registration forms regularly for more info on this procedure.
The remaining 150 € of the registration fees should be paid directly to accommodation
services upon arrival, in cash.
Registrations for the tournament are now officially open, and you can fill out a registration
form from this link on our website:
http://www.eurasiandebate.com/registration.html
Also, please check out our website,http://www.eurasiandebate.com/ for further information.
For any questions or concerns, send an email to: eurasiandebate2015@gmail.com
We look forward to your participation,
Best Regards,
Ilayda Orhan & Tolga Ferdi Çalışır
Co-Conveners of ESDC 2016
Robert College Debate Society