Turkey’s Country Profile
Official country name: Republic of Turkey
Area: 301,383 sq miles (780,580 sq km)
Population: 74.3 million (2006 est.)
Median age: 28.6
Ethnic Groups: Turks, 80 percent; Kurds, 20 percent
GDP and GDP per capita: $403.5 billion and $5,433
Read a complete country profile of Turkey
Turkey’s Olympic History
First time represented at Summer Olympics:
Gold medals won: 36
Silver: 19
Bronze: 19
Athletes at the Beijing Olympics: 68
Number of Sports competing in at Beijing Olympics: 12
Medals at 2008 Beijing Olympics: 2
Turkey’s Olympic Playbook
No doubts. No dithering. No Anatolian ambiguities about this one. Turkey is the Olympic hunk of the Middle East. By far. Since attending its first Summer Olympics in Stockholm in 1912, Turkish athletes have won 36 golds, 19 silvers and 19 bronze for a total of 74 medals.
Only Iran comes close in Middle East bragging rights, but it's a distant second with 10 golds, 15 silvers and 21 bronze for a total of 46. (Turkey and Iran share a border).
The hunk part is no rhetorical flourish: Just about all of Turkey’s medals are in wrestling, weightlifting and boxing. There’s the odd judo and track and field medal here and there, but Turkey is really in it for the smashing, the pounding and the pinning (besides winning a bronze in the triple jump in 1948, Turkey’s only other track and field medal was a bronze in Athens in the hammer throw. John Henry would have felt at home in Izmir).
Yet Turkey’s delegation of 68 athletes is a lot more balanced in its choice of sports than the country’s medal compulsions suggests. Turkey is sending six sailors, none of whom appears to be looking for the way back from Troy. It’s got a judoka, a cyclist and two archers. It’s sending two table tennis players. And a swimming poll-full of swimmers, which just may suggest that the Mediterranean isn’t yet as polluted as feared (unless these are Black Sea products).
In Athens in 2004 Turkey won 10 medals, including three gold and three silver, most since winning 12 in 1948. It had a special incentive: Turks like to show off whenever they’re in the presence of Greeks, the more so when they’re on Turkish soil (and vice versa, of course, Turkey and Greece being Asia Minor’s equivalent of the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry, though unlike the Yankees and the Red Sox, the other two sides have fought wars against each other). In Beijing Turkey won’t have the same stimulant to rely on, nor will it feel like the air has that Mediterranean familiarity to it, as it did in Athens. Much to the contrary.
The air between Turkey and China was, at any rate, singed by a different kind of odor the day of the opening ceremonies in Beijing as a Turkish man outside the Chinese embassy in Ankara, the Turkish capital, set himself on fire during a protest of ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic people with linguistic and cultural affinities with central Asian Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. Some 8 million Muslim Uighurs live in Xinjiang, many of them campaigning for independence from Han Chinese. China has been as repressive there as it has been in Tibet.
Turkey's Medal Winners in Beijing
On the first day of competition, fresh from that cloud-skimming experience at the opening ceremonies, Turkey's Sibel Ozkan made it 75 medals--a silver in the lightweight, 48kg weightlifting competition.
That's the Middle East's first medal in these Olympics.
Ozkan lifted a combined 199 kg, a hefty 13 kg behind the gold medalist and new Olympic record holder Xiexia Chen, who previewed each lift with a screamish call-and-response cheer: her home-turn crowd responded accordingly. Read more...
Turkey’s Athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Archery
Yusuf Goktug Ergin
Zekiye Keskin Satir
Boxing
Yakup Kilic
Adem Kilicci
Furkan Ulaas Memis
Bahram Muzaffer
Onur Sipal
Cycling
Bilal Akgul
Judo
Sezer Huysuz
Sailing
Ates Cinar
Deniz Cinar
Ertugrul Icingir
Sedef Koktenturk
Kemal Muslubas
Ali Kemal Tufekci
Shooting
Yusuf Dikec
Swimming
Omer Aslanoglu
Serkan Atasay
Demir Atasoy
Derya Buyukuncu
Dilara Buse Gunaydin
Gulsah Gunenc
Deniz Nazar
Iris Rosenberger
Kaan Tayla
Onur Uras
Ediz Yildirimer
Table Tennis
Melek Hu
Cem Zeng
Taekwondo
Sibel Guler
Azize Tanrikulu
Bahri Tanrikulu
Servet Tazegul
Track & Field/Athletics
Elvan Abeylegesse (Wins silver medal in 10,000m)
Halil Akkas
Esref Apak
Merve Aydin
Selim Bayrak
Almitu Bekele Degfa
Asli Cakir
Recep Celik
Abdil Ceylan
Bahar Dogan
Turkan Erismis
Ozge Gurler
Melis Mey
Ercument Olgundeniz
Sviatlana Sudak
Nevin Yanit
Weightlifting
Sedat Artuc
Izzet Ince
Sibel Ozkan (Wins silver medal in 48kg weightlifting)
Taner Sagir
Wrestling
Sezar Akgul
Nazmi Avluca (Wins bronze medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, men's 74-84kg division)
Serhat Balci
Seref Eroglu
Ahmet Gulhan
Riza Kayaalp
Hakan Koc
Tevfik Odabasi
Mehmet Ozal
Mehmet Aydin Polatci
Ramazan Sahin
Soner Sucu
Bunyami Sudas
Nurcan Taylan
Seref Tufenk
