Demet Parlak

Demet Parlak — Biography

Demet Parlak is a national athlete from Adana. She is known for repeatedly raising the Turkish pole vault records and for the medals she has brought home from the Balkan Championships and the Islamic Solidarity Games. In 2015 she broke a 15-year-old national record, and in 2018 she reached her personal best of 4.33 metres in Istanbul. Today she competes for the Galatasaray athletics team.

She turned to athletics after watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics on television and began training in 2010. She worked at the Olympic preparation centre in Adana with Oleksandr Smakin and İbrahim Halil Aydın. Her rise came between 2014 and 2016: she took silver at the Balkan Indoor Championships in 2014 and gold in 2016 with 4.20 metres; that year she lifted her outdoor record first to 4.22 and then to 4.30, her indoor record to 4.26, and returned from the Balkan Championships with silver. In 2017 she won gold at the Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku and said her goal was the 2020 Tokyo Olympics; the same year she finished 12th in the final of the European Under-23 Championships. At the 2018 Mediterranean Games she placed ninth.

After 2020 she became a regular on the Balkan podium: bronze in 2020, indoor bronze in 2022, bronze in 2024 and silver in 2025. In 2022 she won gold with Buse Arıkazan at the Islamic Solidarity Games held in Konya. In February 2026 she won a medal for Galatasaray at the Balkan Senior Indoor Athletics Championships.