Sadi Gülçelik

Sadi Gülçelik — Biography

Sadi Gülçelik was a civil engineer and a co-founder of ENKA, and a 1.89-metre basketball player who wore the national shirt at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. He brought sport and business together in one life. After his death his name was kept alive in a sports complex in Istanbul.

He studied civil engineering at Istanbul Technical University. His sporting path began at Galatasaray, where he played for the volleyball team and for the basketball team nicknamed "Yenilmez Armada" (the Invincible Armada), and he also played basketball for Karagücü and Modaspor. At the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki he scored a total of 206 points for Turkey's national basketball team over the tournament.

He turned engineering into enterprise in 1957, founding ENKA with his brother-in-law Şarık Tara. The company's name comes from the family tie between the two partners, the first two letters of the Turkish words for "brother-in-law by marriage" (enişte) and "brother-in-law" (kayınbirader). On August 19, 1980, he was one of the 301 passengers who died when a Saudi Arabian Airlines aircraft caught fire in Riyadh. In 1983 his family built the Enka Sadi Gülçelik Sports Complex in his memory, to international standards; it is in the Sarıyer district of Istanbul.