ABOUT
Pioneer of Tuning Journalism
In the early 2000s, the rise of tuning journalism in Türkiye was led by Ahmet Said Özen. At the helm of TRTUNING magazine, he shaped not only the publishing side of the scene but also the direction of Türkiye’s tuning culture itself, through events, organizations, and sector-defining initiatives. For an entire generation of young car enthusiasts, TRTUNING was more than a magazine. It was a roadmap.
Paris 2006: First Encounter with Drift
The year is 2006. Ahmet Said Özen is at the Paris Tuning Show. An announcement empties the hall, and when he asks why, he learns that a Drift Show is about to begin. He watches it, and his decision forms on the spot: “I have to bring this to Türkiye.”
The show is being run by an Irish team. He watches almost every one of their performances over the course of the fair, postpones his return flight, and sits down with them at the end. They reach an understanding around shows and training, and he invites the team to İstanbul to see the potential of the Turkish market for themselves.
Bringing Drift to İstanbul
Once in İstanbul, the Irish team keeps repeating that pulling this off in Türkiye will be difficult. To prove the potential, Özen runs ads in TRTUNING. One of the people who reads those ads is Harald Müller. The two already knew each other from German automotive launches, where Müller was usually the lead test driver delivering the press training. The reunion would prove decisive for the history of Turkish motorsport.
Compared to the Irish, Müller was warmer, more solutions-oriented, and genuinely in love with İstanbul. Özen decided to move forward with the German driver. Müller insisted that drift could not be promoted from magazine pages alone. It needed a real show on the ground.
The search for a venue led to a trial at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium parking lot. In those days, very few people in Türkiye were willing to hand over a car for something called “drift” because nobody knew what would happen to it. Kadir Tuncer brought his Nissan 200SX to the stadium, and that was how İstanbul met professional drift for the first time, in 2007. Müller liked the asphalt but pointed out that staging this for an audience required grandstands. The hunt for a venue resumed, but the stadium parking lot stayed in the back of everyone’s mind.
Türkiye’s First Drift Show (2007)
The first drift exhibition in Türkiye was finally agreed with CNR Expo Center. The Drift Show took place on the first weekend of July 2007. Mustafa Mert Kazancı, Kadir Tuncer, Timur Pomak and many others who believed in the project entrusted their cars to a German and Swiss crew for the very first show. The result made the potential undeniable.
Right after, Drift Academy İstanbul was founded. Harald Müller and Faruk Kugay began running the training programs, held at the now-iconic Atatürk Olympic Stadium. Many of the drivers still racing today, as well as former drivers now serving on the APEXMASTERS administration, took their first lessons in those sessions.
Passing the Flag and APEXMASTERS
For family reasons, Ahmet Said Özen handed the flag to his older brother Abdurrahman Özen. The training programs grew, the driver pool expanded, and the need for organized racing became unavoidable. The team approached TOSFED and was told that a club would have to be founded to host the APEXMASTERS race series. Abdurrahman Özen founded the club, and a first was achieved in Türkiye: TOSFED became one of the first federations under FIA to officially sanction drift competitions. Today the club’s vice-chairman Kemal Özhaseki serves on the FIA Drift Commission, providing guidance to many federations newer to the sport.
APEXMASTERS has hosted, and continues to host, not only Turkish drivers but internationally renowned competitors from around the world. Like every chairman before him, current chairman Özer Mollamehmetoğlu keeps pushing the series to a higher level each season. The 2025 rounds at İstanbul Park defined the year, and entry numbers in 2026 climbed sharply for the chance to race on that very circuit.
To everyone who contributed to a journey that began with a single show at a fair and grew into the history of drift in Türkiye, thank you.
