A fun little detail of Eurovision history. This graphs shows all Eurovision/National Final/Junior Eurovision entries ever, connected by their common songwriters. You see the small grey "tail" at the top left, only thinly connected to the rest of the network? (1/6)
Well, it turns out it represents Turkish entries from Eurovision/the long lost Turkish national finals! (2/6)
The thing is, the Turkish Eurovision world didn't have any songwriter overlap with the rest of Europe. For most of Eurovision history this "tail" would have been an island, completely disconnected from the big network - but one man, Olcayto Ahmet Tuğsuz, changed that (3/6)
You see, Olcayto had his Eurovision hay-day in the 70's and 80's, writing several entries for Turkish national finals, even making it to the Eurovision stage a few times. But his connection to the main network would come many years later (4/6)
That connection would come in 2016, via the unlikely nation of San Marino. As a part of the "I Didn't Know" songwriting team, Olcayto bridged the connection between the Turkish and big European network, via cowriter Nektarios Tyrakis and "Say Na Na Na" writer Mary Applegate (5/6)
It just goes to show how weird the world of Eurovision can be, that an entire island of Turkish writers was only incidentally connected to the big family because of a singing dentist/Jeopardy host with a dream. Hope you enjoyed reading this brief history thread! (6/6)
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