Istanbul GSK Women

İstanbul GSK opens the 2025-2026 season in the Turkish Women's Basketball Super League for the first time, having come up through the regional divisions the previous year.

The basketball section is younger than the multi-sport club that carries it. İstanbul Gençlik Spor Kulübü had been running under the city's youth and sports directorate since 1995, but its women's team only took shape around 2014, when Esmeral Tunçluer, once a mainstay for Fenerbahçe and the national side, put it together. Rather than building through a junior system, she brought in players who already had senior minutes elsewhere, and the club climbed from the second-tier league and the regional competition on that basis rather than through home-grown talent.

There is no rivalry attached to the name yet — promotion came too recently for one to form — and no championships either; this season is about establishing a foothold rather than defending one. Matches are played at the Caferağa Spor Salonu, which holds 1,500.

Sevgi Tonguç heads into the campaign as one of the more experienced names in an otherwise newly assembled squad, the kind of player a promoted side leans on when the calendar turns unfamiliar and the opponents are the ones who usually do the winning.