A humanoid robot has stolen the show at Teknofest Southeast, held at Şanlıurfa GAP Airport in southeastern Turkey. Its party trick: performing halay, the traditional Turkish folk dance where dancers link hands or handkerchiefs in a line, all in time with folk music from Şanlıurfa itself. Visitors, especially kids, crowded around on Saturday to film it on their phones.
The backstory is a neat bit of international teamwork. According to engineer Fatih Baran Aslan, the robot's hardware was manufactured in China, but the software that lets it dance came from a Turkish company. After the base unit arrived, his team coded the choreography from scratch — halay plus roughly a dozen other routines, alongside crowd-pleasing gestures like waving, clapping and blowing kisses.
The robot fits right into the wider Teknofest formula. The festival, running through the weekend at the airport, pairs its usual heavyweights — aviation displays, defence tech, technology competitions — with exhibitions and interactive cultural activities. This year, the machines and the folk tradition are talking to each other.
For travellers, the episode is a useful snapshot of what Teknofest actually is: less a trade fair, more a sprawling free public festival that draws families in huge numbers to whichever Turkish city hosts it. Editions rotate around the country, and the southeastern edition puts Şanlıurfa — a city better known for Göbeklitepe, its bazaars and spicy Urfa cuisine — in front of a tech-curious crowd. If you're visiting during a Teknofest weekend, expect crowds, queues for popular demos, and exactly the kind of unexpected moments a dancing robot represents.
It's also a small sign of how Türkiye presents itself: a country keen to be seen as a technology hub, but one that showcases its innovations through centuries-old folk culture rather than despite it. A Chinese-built robot dancing to Urfa tunes is, in its way, a fair summary of the place.
