This years host Turkey was able to win the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time last year in Riga. Seretab Erener was able to take Europe by storm with her 'belly-dance-number' "Everyway That I Can". Returning home, her win was as much celebrated as the Turkish soccer team's success in the World Championship that year. Turkey has taken part in the Eurovision only since 1975 - usually ending up close to last - until last year, their best result being a 3rd place in Dublin 1997 with the song "Dinie" sung by Sebnem Paker. The reason might have been the rather exotic sound of Turkish music and their language. The fact that each country is now allowed to sing in English has proven an advantage for Turkey. Still unforgotten are Turkish entries like "Petr'oil" by Ajda Pekkan (The Hague 1980), "Opera" by Cetin Alp & The Short Wave (Munich 1983) or "Didai, didai, dai" by a group called MFÖ (Gothenburg 1985).

This year Turkey also won't follow its musical tradition - their entry will be a contemporary pop song with oriental influences. The band Athena is very popular on the scene in Istanbul and the song "For Real" was chosen to represent the country by audiences of a TV-show hosted by TRT. Athena has already appeared on stage in Cologne at the 'Popkomm', an international fair for music in Germany. It's going to be very interesting how well Turkey will do this year - last years host Latvia only received 5 points altogether - but we will see. Gueley Gueley Turkyie!