Hayri Arsebük

Hayri Arsebük — Biography

Born on 8 February 1915, Hayri Arsebük was one of Turkey's early Republican-era basketball players. He wore the Galatasaray jersey between 1932 and 1936, a period in which the club fielded some of the country's first organized basketball squads, and he also earned a place on the Turkish national team.

Arsebük was part of Turkey's squad at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the first Games to feature basketball as an official medal sport. The tournament was contested outdoors on lawn and clay tennis courts, a format that made conditions unpredictable for the competing nations, Turkey among them. Arsebük died in 1943 at the age of 28, cutting short a career that had placed him among the pioneers of Turkish basketball.