Ferhat Arican notched the best score of the day on the parallel bars as Turkey impressed in qualifying at the European Men's Artistic Gymnastics Championships ©Getty Images

Hosts Turkey set the standard at the European Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Championships after an impressive day in qualifying.

The Turkish team registered 251.595 points following their performances on the six apparatus, with Ferhat Arican and reigning rings world champion İbrahim Çolak both finishing top of the pile on their preferred apparatus in Mersin.

Arican performed an excellent parallel bars routine to record the top score of the day with 15.333 as Ukrainian Petro Pakhniuk and Bulgaria’s David Huddleston came second and third respectively.

Çolak claimed the highest qualifying score on rings and will also compete in the parallel bars final.

Ahmet Önder reached the floor, vault and high bar finals while Abdelrahman Elgamal will challenge for the medals on floor, rings, vault and high bar.

Expected to challenge for that top team spot, Ukraine finished the day just one point shy of Turkey on 250.462.

Oleg Verniaiev, who won gold in the parallel bars and silver in the all-around at Rio 2016, withdrew last week.

But the Ukrainians can count on the experience of Igor Radivilov who took the lead on vault - a discipline he won bronze in at London 2012 - and placed third on rings while Pakhniuk qualified to four apparatus finals.

Ukrainians Roman Vashchenko, Vladyslav Hryko and Yevgen Yudenkov all moved through to the finals.

Hungary came third on 241.961 largely thanks to Krisztofer Meszaros, who finished second on the pommel horse and will also compete in the floor and parallel bars finals.

Dávid Vecsernyés advances to the finals of the high bar and pommel horse.

Croatians Robert Seligman and Tin Srbic topped the ranking on pommel horse and high bar respectively while Belarussian Yahor Sharamkou edged Artem Dolgopyat of Isreal on the floor.

Austria, Israel and Bulgaria progressed to the team final where they will face Turkey, Ukraine and Hungary on Saturday (December 12).

The best eight gymnasts per apparatus are through to the apparatus finals the following day.

Teams from Russia, Italy and Britain pulled out of this event because of concerns over coronavirus.

Qualification for the rescheduled Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, now set to take place in 2021, will not be on offer at the event.

Baku in Azerbaijan was due to stage the competition before it was moved to Mersin due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The competition in Turkey is due to resume tomorrow with the junior individual all-around final.