Abdullah Öztürk

Abdullah Öztürk — Biography

Abdullah Öztürk (born 1 October 1989, in Trabzon) is a Turkish para table tennis player who has built a decorated international career despite a congenital muscle-wasting condition; he is the older brother of fellow para athlete Ali Öztürk. After moving to Ankara at age 8 because of limited schooling in his home village, he first rose through wheelchair basketball to the junior national team before being introduced to table tennis in 2007 through a Physically Disabled Sports Federation outreach program under coach İlhami Kılınçkaya. Regular training helped halt the progression of his condition, and he later trained as a coach at Gazi University.

Competing for Turkey from the 2012 London Paralympics onward, Öztürk won a team silver medal at the 2014 World Championships in Beijing before taking individual gold in the class 4 wheelchair event at the 2016 Rio Paralympics, where he also shared in a team bronze with his teammates. He successfully defended his individual title at the Tokyo Paralympics (held in 2021), and for years held the world number one ranking in his class starting in 2019.

He added a further team bronze medal alongside teammate Nesim Turan at the 2024 Paris Paralympics and continued winning gold medals at European championships in the years that followed. He married in late 2025, and has set his sights on the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics as his next major goal.