  It is known that the chiral part of any 2d conformal field theory defines a
3d topological quantum field theory: quantum states of this TQFT are the CFT
conformal blocks. The main aim of this paper is to show that a similar CFT/TQFT
relation exists also for the full CFT. The 3d topological theory that arises is
a certain ``square'' of the chiral TQFT. Such topological theories were studied
by Turaev and Viro; they are related to 3d gravity. We establish an
operator/state correspondence in which operators in the chiral TQFT correspond
to states in the Turaev-Viro theory. We use this correspondence to interpret
CFT correlation functions as particular quantum states of the Turaev-Viro
theory. We compute the components of these states in the basis in the
Turaev-Viro Hilbert space given by colored 3-valent graphs. The formula we
obtain is a generalization of the Verlinde formula. The later is obtained from
our expression for a zero colored graph. Our results give an interesting
``holographic'' perspective on conformal field theories in 2 dimensions.
