Turkey led the list of the first 10 countries chosen as finalists in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 after voting ended in the first semifinal.

The 10 entries to qualify were Turkey, Sweden, Israel, Portugal, Malta, Finland, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Romania, Armenia and Iceland after voting by television viewers and juries across Europe.

Turkish entry "Dum Tek Tek" by pop singer Hadise, featuring oriental rhythms and belly dancing, is seen as one of the favourites in the annual extravaganza of music and camp being hosted by Russia this year.

Hadise and her team cheered and waved red-and-white Turkish flags after her qualification was announced, television pictures showed.

Fifteen out of 25 finalists are now known. Russia, France, Germany, Britain and Spain are automatically given the right to compete in Saturday´s final, while the remaining 10 finalists will be chosen on Thursday.

The countries eliminated in the first semifinal were Andorra, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Montenegro and Switzerland.

According to Francis Bacon linguistics is an honorable way of wasting time. He surely did not live to see Eurovision. Inevitably, we are getting exposed to this crap this way or another. Last year, I heard and detested the song of Kalomi from Greece and liked ours. This year we have switched to Kalomi style on account that she could  garner more points with that silly song. 

Hadise´s song is a caricature of the Eastern culture;  a pack of half-baked turkish delight. She shows too much flesh hopelessly promoting a song which will be forgotten before the summer ends.

I think Eurovision should change format and stop being a contest of nations.  Don´t you think Europe has too many of these all European (with a few exceptions) organizations overflowing with all this patriotic stuff? It would better serve its purpose of functioning as a common platform among European nations if it promoted new talents regardless of their nationalities. A jury made up of serious musicians (likes of Elton John, Mark Knopfler,David Gilmour) could determine the winner based on musical merit.

 well it´s not even patriotic...it´s soo patronising it´s laughable..... and when it comes to scoring well your allies in war are your allies for eurovision ha ha.......

At least Hadise will be 3th

Actually i dont care about the result

 yeah you do ha ha

 yeah i do

I think Turkey will take first place this year

In my view, there´s no point in taking the Eurovision song contest too seriously. This programme is all about entertainment, and the camper the better! It´s the longest international song contest of its kind on TV and it draws audiences from all around the world in excess of 500 million, so why change it? People love it for whatever it is and I don´t think the voting has been taken that seriously either. It´s all about fun and friendship, not any musical talents. I´m sure if Britain finally won, we wouldn´t be so bitter about it and keep criticising it. Perhaps we should be more bitter about the fact that we don´t have enough ´friends´ to vote for us??

By the way, the Turkish song is just perfect for this type of song competition. Let´s vote for it!!!

 GO TURKEY GO!!!!

I´ve been listening to Düm Tek Tek for weeks and weeks, never mind if it wins or not (I hope it will I shall vote!), it still will make Türkiye proud I´m sure

I shall be having my own Eurovision party in my house, by that I mean I will sit watching it with a plate of cheese and a constant supply of coffee, whooping and cheering

Go Hadise! You can do it!

Anybody else think our UK entry is really bland?

The secret motive behind Eurovision song contest is to find the degree of prevailing friendship between various countries, on that day. It is only a damn national popularity poll.

The song itself or the quality of music/singer  makes no difference at all.....

 Ahhh but they have changed the voting system to try and stop this!  Part panel vote and part viewer vote............ but I bet it wont make too much of a difference........ and now Terry Wogan is not commentating on it (UK), it will be even more boring

I´m glad Türkiye did so well but I thought Hadise would win!  She was beautiful and gave an excellent performance I loved hearing the Turkish people in the crowd in Moscow chant ´TÜRKÝYE!" But I still can´t believe Norway won 

The Norwegian song was great and a really great performance. A bit different from all the others.. girls singing pop

Yes, it´s a pity that Turkey didn´t claimed at least 3rd place - but anyway, 4th place is really good I think .

And by the way - can someone translate the title "Düm tek tek" ? I know that "tek tek" means "one by one", but I can´t find a meaning of "düm". Is this kind of idiom or something else ?

(oh, no matter - I´ve just found it on Wikipedia quoting:

"Düm Tek Tek" is onomatopoeic for the sound generated by a drum; with "boom bang bang" being an English equivalent.)

This year it was far more entertaining in terms of good songs and the new voting system seems to work with far less neighbourly voting   But hey Turkey, we gave you douze point so where was our douze point??    Norway fielded a complete weed - Sakis Rouvas was the man for me............ blow the song the white trousers and ripped shirt did it for me

we had the greatest show this year i think!!!! i liked almost all the singers! it was one the strongest eurovisions´. I like the winner! but i absolutely didn´t like the chose of our singer.. Our Dima Bilan was much more better!

congradulations to all the participants and countries thx the show

hot kisses from cold Russia

couldn´t agree more... and the quality of the songs is going down every year!!

From a purely musical point of view, the UK and France performances were a class apart. Nevertheless, they are not the kinds of songs you would want to hear at Eurovision.  The German entry was quite disgusting. I didn´t understand what was so special about the Norwegian entry. It was a pretty ordinary song reminiscient of the 70´s tunes. I liked Portugal. At least I now know what their folk music is like.

As most have already said, this year, most songs were at least listenable. It is also worth mentioning the lack of stupidity in the shows, no monsters, no zombies etc.

I liked Moldova and Estonia. Don´t remember other participants. I do regret, however, that Eurovision no longer has the sing-in-your-mother-tongue policy. Most songs brought back Modern Talking disco aera that I hate, kitchy kitchy yah yah yah yeah