Advent of spring celebrated with Nevruz festival

People in Turkey's northern province of Kastamonu on Wednesday begun celebrating Nevruz, a spring festival, by lighting a symbolic Nevruz fire, which signifies the joy of spring.

What makes Kastamonu a significant spot for this year's celebrations is that this Turkish city has been selected as the Cultural Capital of the Turkic World for 2018.
Turkey's Culture Minister Numan Kurtulmuş spoke at an event held in Kastamonu to mark the Nevruz.

"Nevruz shows us that people are the same and together with all their differences and diversity," he said.

Celebrations saw people leaping over open flames, blacksmiths beating metal and revelers offering traditional foods to one other.

Turkey's Kurdish population, in particular, sees the festival as an important traditional and cultural event.
In eastern provinces close to the Iranian and Armenian borders, the festival is celebrated in a more traditional way.
Festivities in Kirghizstan are held at the main square in the capital Bishkek.

A traditional theater show was staged as part of the festival.
Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan, the celebrations continue throughout March. Uzbeks serve a traditional hard-to-make dessert called "Samanu," a sweet paste made entirely from young wheatgrass.
Making Samanu takes around 24 hours and Uzbeks believe that this traditional dessert helps people to be healthier and stronger.

The dessert is seen as a symbol of the Nevruz and is generally cooked by a group of women working together.

Nevruz, which literally means the "new day" in Persian, is celebrated every year on March 21 mainly in Iran, Afghanistan, India, the Turkic republics in Central Asia and the Caucasian countries in addition to Albania and Macedonia in the Balkans.

The United Nations also recognizes Nevruz as an international cultural day.