Turkey national football team: the full squad and key players, and the five who have never played
Vincenzo Montella has named his first squad since the World Cup, and the group waiting for it is the hardest in the competition. Here is who made it, who could not, and what the caps column says.
Sep 21, 2026
Vincenzo Montella named a 29-man Turkey squad on 18 September 2026 for the country’s opening UEFA Nations League fixtures, at home to France on 25 September and Italy on 28 September, away to Belgium on 2 October and Italy again on 5 October. It is the first squad he has picked since the World Cup, and it is missing two of the players the World Cup was built around.
The full list is below, with every player’s club, caps and international goals as they stood when the squad was announced.
Turkey national football team squad in full
A note on the name before the list. The federation and FIFA have used Türkiye since 2022, and the team is still widely written as Turkey in English. Both refer to the same side, the one nicknamed Ay-Yıldızlılar, the Crescent-Stars.
Goalkeepers
| Player | Club | Caps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uğurcan Çakır | Galatasaray | 42 | 0 |
| Altay Bayındır | Celta Vigo | 12 | 0 |
| Muhammed Şengezer | Başakşehir | 1 | 0 |
| Okan Kocuk | Samsunspor | 0 | 0 |
Defenders
| Player | Club | Caps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Merih Demiral | Al-Ahli | 65 | 6 |
| Zeki Çelik | Juventus | 63 | 3 |
| Ferdi Kadıoğlu | Brighton | 32 | 2 |
| Ozan Kabak | Hoffenheim | 31 | 2 |
| Abdülkerim Bardakcı | Galatasaray | 30 | 2 |
| Eren Elmalı | Galatasaray | 25 | 0 |
| Samet Akaydin | Trabzonspor | 19 | 1 |
| Emirhan Topçu | Beşiktaş | 2 | 0 |
| Adil Demirbağ | Konyaspor | 0 | 0 |
Midfielders
| Player | Club | Caps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orkun Kökçü | Beşiktaş | 53 | 4 |
| İsmail Yüksek | Fenerbahçe | 34 | 1 |
| Salih Özcan | Beşiktaş | 32 | 1 |
| Demir Tıknaz | Braga | 2 | 0 |
| Bartuğ Elmaz | Fenerbahçe | 0 | 0 |
| Melih Kabasakal | Trabzonspor | 0 | 0 |
Forwards
| Player | Club | Caps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kerem Aktürkoğlu | Fenerbahçe | 54 | 15 |
| İrfan Can Kahveci | Fenerbahçe | 48 | 6 |
| Barış Alper Yılmaz | Galatasaray | 38 | 5 |
| Arda Güler | Real Madrid | 33 | 7 |
| Yunus Akgün | Galatasaray | 21 | 4 |
| Oğuz Aydın | Fenerbahçe | 12 | 0 |
| Deniz Gül | Galatasaray | 10 | 2 |
| Can Uzun | Eintracht Frankfurt | 8 | 1 |
| Aral Şimşir | Trabzonspor | 1 | 0 |
| İlhan Fakılı | Beşiktaş | 0 | 0 |
The five who have never played
Run down the caps column and five names read zero: Okan Kocuk, Adil Demirbağ, Bartuğ Elmaz, Melih Kabasakal and İlhan Fakılı. Widen it to two caps or fewer and it is nine of the 29, so close to a third of this squad has barely played international football or has not played it at all.
That would be unremarkable in a friendly window. This is not one. Turkey have been drawn in League A, Group 1, with France, Italy and Belgium, three sides that have won the World Cup six times between them, and there is no fourth team to take points off. Montella is blooding players in the toughest group the competition has.
The other side of the same column is how thin the experience is at the top. Only four players have 50 caps or more: Merih Demiral on 65, Zeki Çelik on 63, Kerem Aktürkoğlu on 54 and Orkun Kökçü on 53. Rüştü Reçber’s Turkey record is 120.
Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Kenan Yıldız are both injured
Two absences shape this squad, and neither is a selection call. Hakan Çalhanoğlu, the Inter midfielder who is Turkey’s most-capped active player on 108, and Kenan Yıldız, the 21-year-old Juventus forward who went to the World Cup as one of the team’s two headline attackers, are both out injured.
The arithmetic is worth sitting with. Çalhanoğlu alone has 108 caps. The most-capped player who did travel has 65, so his absence removes a player with more international experience than anyone in the squad by a margin of 43 appearances. He has also scored 22 international goals, and the leading scorer in this 29-man group, Aktürkoğlu, has 15.
Çelik’s presence produces the oddest consequence. He is the only player in the squad attached to a Serie A club, and two of Turkey’s four fixtures in this window are against Italy.
Key players
Arda Güler. Twenty-one, at Real Madrid, and on 33 caps and seven goals he is already the squad’s second-highest scorer, behind only Aktürkoğlu. With Çalhanoğlu out, the creative burden lands on him by default rather than by design.
Kerem Aktürkoğlu. The squad’s leading scorer on 15, which is 24 per cent of the 62 international goals the entire 29 have managed between them. Turkey’s scoring has been concentrated in one player for a while, and this window will test how much of it was really his.
Merih Demiral. The most-capped man in the squad at 65 and, at Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia, the one senior defender with a long international record. Six goals is a lot for a centre-back.
Orkun Kökçü. Fifty-three caps at Beşiktaş, and the closest thing to a like-for-like answer in midfield with Çalhanoğlu unavailable.
Uğurcan Çakır. Forty-two caps and first choice in goal. Behind him the three other keepers have 13 caps between them, one of the narrower drop-offs in the squad.
Where this squad is drawn from
Twenty-one of the 29 play their club football in Turkey, and only eight play abroad. Those eight are spread across six countries, with Spain and Germany supplying two each and England, Italy, Portugal and Saudi Arabia one apiece, so no foreign league has anything like a bloc in this team.
| Club | Players |
|---|---|
| Galatasaray | 6 |
| Fenerbahçe | 5 |
| Beşiktaş | 4 |
| Trabzonspor | 3 |
| Başakşehir, Samsunspor, Konyaspor | 1 each |
| Abroad | 8 |
The four clubs that dominate Turkish football, Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş and Trabzonspor, provide 18 of the 29, a fraction over 62 per cent. The eight based abroad carry 246 caps between them against 422 for the 21 at home, so the players who left are individually the more experienced group even though they are outnumbered by nearly three to one.
Who else is in contention
A squad list on its own hides how much of the pool is sitting outside it. These are the most experienced players called up by Turkey in the previous twelve months who are not in this one.
| Player | Club | Caps |
|---|---|---|
| Hakan Çalhanoğlu | Inter Milan | 108 |
| Kaan Ayhan | Galatasaray | 74 |
| Çağlar Söyüncü | Çorum | 61 |
| Mert Müldür | Fenerbahçe | 48 |
| Mert Günok | Fenerbahçe | 37 |
| Kenan Yıldız | Juventus | 31 |
Those six hold 359 caps between them. The 29 players who were picked hold 668. So a group of six absentees carries experience worth more than half of the entire selected squad, which is the clearest measure of how much of Turkey’s World Cup team is not available for this window.
The fixtures
| Date | Fixture |
|---|---|
| 25 September 2026 | Turkey v France |
| 28 September 2026 | Turkey v Italy |
| 2 October 2026 | Belgium v Turkey |
| 5 October 2026 | Italy v Turkey |
Two more group games follow in November, at home to Belgium and away to France.
How Turkey got here
This is the first competitive football Turkey have played since a World Cup that ended badly. They qualified for the first time in 24 years, drawn in Group D with the United States, Australia and Paraguay, and then lost the opener to Australia. A second defeat, to ten-man Paraguay, put them out. They did beat the hosts 3-2 in the last group match, which was enough for three points and no more; they finished bottom of the group.
One figure frames the size of the rebuild better than any of the World Cup results. These 29 players have 62 international goals between them. Hakan Şükür scored 51 on his own.
If you are following the rest of this group and Turkey’s own World Cup summer, our squad guides to Paraguay, the team that knocked them out, and to the Netherlands are built the same way.