Solid organ transplantation in Turkey began with two heart transplants in 1969 which, unfortunately, were unsuccessful. On November 3, 1975, we performed the first renal transplantation in Turkey, with a kidney donated from mother to son. This was followed by the first cadaveric kidney transplantation, which was carried out at our center on October 10, 1978 using an organ supplied by Eurotransplant. On June 3, 1979 the law on harvesting, storage, grafting and transplantation of organs and tissues was enacted, and later the same year, on July 27, the first local cadaveric kidney transplantation was realized by our team. On January 21, 1982 some new articles were added to Law 2238 with the enactment of Law 2594. In 1988, by another ground breaking event in Turkey, our team successfully achieved the first cadaveric liver transplantation. The first living-related segmental liver transplantation in Turkey and in the region was also performed by our group in March 1990, when a 10-month-old child received a transplant from his mother. One month later, a living-related liver transplantation in an adult (from a father to his 22 year-old son) was successfully performed. In 1992, we performed the first multiple-organ harvesting from a living donor -- a segmental liver and a kidney -- in a transplantation from mother to daughter. The heterotopic auxilary segmental liver transplantion program for selected cases was also initiated in 1998. As of September 2004, a total of 1506 kidney transplantations had been performed by our team, and nearly 25% of the kidney transplantations were from cadaver donors. Since 1988, a total of 121 liver transplantations were performed by our team. During 29 years of solid organ transplantation history in Turkey 6686 kidney transplants in 28 different centers, 696 liver transplants in 16 different centers located in 8 cities, 13278 cornea, 2883 bone marrow, 175 heart valve, 132 heart and 15 pancreas transplants had been performed in nationwide. The Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation (MESOT) was established in 1987 with the leadership of our team and had continued its mission againts to all international problems in this region. In 1990 the Turkýsh Organ Transplantation Society had also been established. With great efforts of the society, 7 international scientific congresses had been organised. In 2001, the health ministry gathered our cumulative resources and established National Coordination Center as an umbrella organization to promote the transplantation activities, especially cadaver organ procurement, in Turkey. The transplantation activities are accelarating day by day all around the country since 1975, but as for the cadaveric donation, it is still far beyond the desired rates. Improvements in the field of education and coordination will increase the quality and the quantity of transplantation activities.