Turkish Carfest Stalls

The organizers of a 15,000-capacity festival that advertised acts it hadn’t booked are ditching the July 22-24 event and trying again in August.

The fiasco came to light when Megadeth, which is still fighting to get the money it claims it is owed from its last show in Turkey in 2005, put a note on its Web site saying "a concert promoter in Turkey is falsely advertising that Megadeth is to play in Bursa, Turkey this coming July."

"Megadeth is not, and never was confirmed to play this show. Megadeth’s management is aggressively pursuing this concert promoter for false advertising," it continued.

Orkun Özkan of Onaltiproject, which organizes Vos Vos Carnival, a festival built around a rally for Volkswagen owners, says the "misunderstanding" over the advertising of Megadeth and Faithless was the result of a couple of unfortunate mishaps.

"We discovered that the people booking the acts for us were not being truthful with us and they did not have Megadeth or Faithless," he told Pollstar, explaining that he couldn’t remember the name of the agency that promised the bands and that he’s subsequently lost touch with them.

"We gave ideas to our advertising agency to help it design a mock-up poster with Megadeth and Faithless on it, but then they released the details to the national press," he added.

Vos Vos Carnival now has new dates, August 22-24, and has moved to a new site at Urumlu, opposite Bursa University.

Özkan said he’s still hopeful of getting Faithless, although Paul Bolton from Helter Skelter – the band’s agent – said his only contact with the event has been the cease and desist letter he sent it when he found out the act had been falsely advertised for the July dates.

So far Özkan’s lineup includes a tribute band called Red Not Chili Peppers supported by a few national acts.