Atilla Çakmak: TOFAŞ & Bursa Basketball Career

2024 It was the summer months of the year. What I wrote in 2010 TOFAŞ Sports Club’After the 35 years of the book, I was supposed to write the 50-year story of TOFAŞ Sports Club. After that, this book did not happen. For that book Brother Atilla‘it TOFAŞI asked him to tell the story of his coming to . Thank you, he also wrote and Nedim Karakaş‘s son Dear Oğuz Karakaş He also sent it to me by e-mail. I wanted to share this article, which I could not use because it was not a book, with you as it is, after his death. Look Atilla Çakmak, TOFAŞ How he described his journey:

“In the fall of 1974, when I was still a senior student at the Faculty of Economics at Istanbul University, I had no idea that my life would suddenly change. While I was resting in my room one afternoon, I woke up with my mother calling, “Get up, look, they are looking for you.” My friend (Fat) Nur Gencer said, “There is Yalçın İpbüken downstairs at the door. “He wants to transfer you to Bursa SAS,” he said. I told him that it would be difficult since I was still in the final year of the Faculty of Economics, but we still met with Mr. Yalçın to talk about the issue in detail. During our meeting with Yalçın İpbüken, he told me about the establishment of TOFAŞ Sports Club and that they wanted to join the Turkish Away Basketball First League by merging with Bursa SAS, but nothing was clear as of that day. With the idea that the club would need ready-made athletes for such a structuring, Şişman first mentioned He met with Nur and Nur recommended him to meet me first as a friend. After this preliminary meeting, I recommended my teammate İsmail Kahyaoğlu to him. İsmail was living in a house close to me in Teşvikiye. We all went to İsmail and agreed to meet at Eczacıbaşı Sports Club in Istanbul in the evening. attended.

Along with Yalçın brother, Bilal Öngör, who had previously played for the National Team and would later work as a player-coach in the TOFAŞ SAS team, also participated. Birol brother had already settled in Bursa and was working as an engineer at Azot Sanayi A.Ş. At the end of that first meeting, we agreed to meet at the Tofaş factory in Bursa at a later date. When we went to Bursa, Hüseyin Çetin first welcomed us at the door (Colombo). Hüseyin, who later became my dear friend, was a beloved person who was devoted to basketball and worked as a basketball referee. He was given the nickname Colombo by his friends because he was wearing a coat similar to the coat of Commissioner Colombo, the leading character in the TV series Commissioner Colombo, starring Peter Falk, which was very popular in Türkiye at the time. TOFAŞ Factory was an important step and foreign capital participation for industrializing Türkiye. Our entry into the factory, which was very large and beautiful at that time, with the vision of the Koç Family and the partnership of FIAT, was a new experience for us.

When we went to Yalçın Bey’s room, his secretary, Fatoş Alatan, welcomed us with a smile that never left her face. He later became our family friend. We have accumulated many wonderful memories with her late husband Erkan and Fatoş, who also contributed a lot to TOFAŞ SAS and were also members of TOFAŞ. Gradually, an adventure that I thought would be difficult at first because I was a student, became more attractive as I met new people.Afterwards, when we went to Bursa Atatürk Sports Hall, we met the late Hayri Koyuncu, who played a great role in the development of Bursa basketball and made a lot of effort to especially make young children love basketball. As I got to know him and saw what he did for Bursa basketball and witnessed how much he loved basketball and young people, I couldn’t help but mention his name.

Gradually, the team started to recover and the club began to be restructured. First, we won the Bursa league and continued to progress towards Yalçın Bey’s goal. After winning the Anatolian Cup Championship played in Konya, as the Anatolian Champion, we would go to Eskişehir to play the Promotion Demotion matches, in which the Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir First Local Division Champions would also participate and the champion would qualify to participate in the Turkish Second Away Basketball League.

I would like to draw attention to a very important issue here. Yalçın Ağabey was both the club president and the Personnel Manager of the TOFAŞ Factory since the establishment of the club. His ability to blend these two different hats together very well, and the fact that the employees on both sides were roughly the same age, created a dynamic that was unlikely to have been predicted beforehand.