The is the ,
Mehmet Okur ,
Mirsad Türkcan ,
Kerem Tunçeri and
Hüseyin Beşok .
Turkey's European championship debut came at
Eurobasket 1949 , held in
Cairo ,
Egypt . The Turks split their six games in the seven-team round robin tournament, finishing with three wins and three losses for 4th place.
Turkey competed again at
Eurobasket 1951 in
Paris . Their only loss in the preliminary round was to the
Soviet Union as Turkey earned the second-rank spot with a 3-1 record. Their single loss to
Bulgaria in the semifinal round, however, was enough to bump them from championship contention as they came out on the bottom of a three-way tie with a 2-1 record. They won their classificiation 5-8 game, but lost the 5/6 game to
Italy .
Turkey returned after missing 1953's edition to
Eurobasket 1955 in
Budapest . They went 1-2 in their preliminary round group, taking third in the pool and moving to classification play. There they lost only to
France on their way to a 3-1 record in classification round 1. They lost their 9-12 semifinal by 1 point to
Finland , but defeated
England 77-54 in the next game to take 11th place of the 18 team tournament.
Turkey appeared again at
Eurobasket 1957 in
Sofia . Losing to the
Soviet Union and
Poland in the preliminary round, Turkey took third in the group to be sent to the classification pool. They defeated each of the other seven teams in the classification round in order to take 9th place of the 16 teams.
The Turkey national basketball team, which rose to final at
Eurobasket 2001 in
Istanbul for the first time, was defeated by
Yugoslavia with a score of 69-78 and won the silver medal.
Spanish Basketball Team became third defeating
Germany 99-90.
Turkish team reached the semifinals at the
2005 Mediterranean Games in
Almería ,
Spain . The bronze medal match, it played against the
Spain National Basketball Team , but became fourth losing 84-70.
Turkey qualified for
Eurobasket 2005 held in
Serbia And Montenegro , but lost to
Lithuania (87-75) and
Croatia (80-67) defeating only
Bulgaria (94-89) in the preliminary round. It took third in the group to be sent to the classification pool.
Germany eliminated Turkish team defeating 66-57. It achieved the final standing 9-12.
Turkey was awarded one of the four
Wild Card s by
FIBA for the qualification to the
Basketball World Championship 2006 in
Japan .
Turkish squad completed the
Prilimary Rounds In Group C at second place after the
Greek Team , and was entitled to play in the
Round Of 16 , winning 4 matches against
Lithuania (76-74),
Australia (76-68),
Brazil (73-71) and
Qatar (76-69) of the total 5, beaten only by Greece (69-76) in the last match. The young team made also achievements such as the first official win over Lithuania and the first ever 4 consequtive wins in a championship. On August 26, 2006 Turkish national team qualified for Elite Eight defeating
Slovenia by 90-84.
In
2010 , Turkey will host the FIBA World Championships.
