The Passion

Football and the Story of Modern Turkey

Patrick Keddie

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781784538026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786723338
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

In 1981 a young semi-professional footballer - known as `Imam Beckenbauer' for his piety and his dominant style of play - has his career cut short after a confrontation with Turkey's military junta. His name was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and three decades later he is Turkey's most powerful ruler since Ataturk....'
Turkey is a nation obsessed with football. From the flares which cover the stadium with multi-coloured smoke and often bring play to a halt, to the `conductors' - ultras who lead the `walls of sound' at matches, Turkish football has always been an awesome spectacle. And yet, in this politically fraught country, caught between the Middle East and the West, football has also always been so much more. From the fan groups resisting the government in the streets and stands, to ambitious politicians embroiling clubs in Machiavellian shenanigans, football in Turkey is a site of power, anger, and resistance.
Journalist and football obsessive Patrick Keddie takes us on a wild journey through Turkey's role in the world's most popular game. He travels from the streets of Istanbul, where fans dodge tear gas and water cannons, to the plains of Anatolia, where women are fighting for their rights to wear shorts and play sports. He meets a gay referee facing death threats, Syrian footballers trying to piece together their shattered dreams, and Kurdish teams struggling to play football amid war. `The Passion' also tells the story of the biggest match-fixing scandal in European football, and sketches its murky connections to the country's leadership. In doing so he lifts the lid on a rarely glimpsed side of modern Turkey.
Funny, touching and beautifully observed, this is the story of Turkey as we have never seen it before.

PATRICK KEDDIE is a journalist and essayist based in Istanbul. His writing has appeared in Al Jazeera, Delayed Gratification, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, the LA Review of Books, Middle East Eye, and the Sunday Herald, among others.

‘I found The Passion a captivating account of modern Turkey, its passions and frustrations; perhaps it won’t make you fall in love with Turkish football, but it will help you see why it is so central in understanding Turkey’s soul.’

Kaya Genc
author of Under the Shadow: Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey

‘Patrick Keddie takes us inside the unceasing Turkish football conversation. The game turns out to be a great device to explain this little understood, football-mad country and its football-mad ruler (who recently banned the foreign word “arena”, forcing many Turkish stadiums to be renamed). The Passion is an energetically researched history of Turkey through football.’

Simon Kuper
author of Football Against the Enemy

Published in 2018 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com

Copyright © 2018 Patrick Keddie

The right of Patrick Keddie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 78453 802 6
eISBN: 978 1 78672 333 8
ePDF: 978 1 78673 333 7

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Text design, typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London

To my parents

Contents

• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Prologue: Ultra
• 1 Fathers and Sons
• 2 The Battle for Ankara
• 3 ‘We are watching a puppet show’
• 4 Stadium Sagas
• 5 ‘Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance’
• 6 Kurdish Cup Specialists
• 7 The Rebel Referee
• 8 Free Syrian Football
• 9 Dreaming at the Edge of Europe
• 10 ‘I fell in love with football’
• Epilogue: ‘Football is faster than words’
• Acknowledgements
• Notes

‌List of Abbreviations

AKP (Justice and Development Party) – a conservative party with its roots in Islamism, co-founded by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2001

ANAP (Motherland Party) – a centre-right, neoliberal political party founded by Turgut Ozal

CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) – an international body established to settle sports-related disputes

CHP (Republican People’s Party) – a Kemalist and social-democratic political party

CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) – an umbrella party for the ‘Young Turks’ during the Ottoman Empire

DP (Democrat Party) – a centre-right party led by Adnan Menderes

FETO (Fethullahist Terror Organisation) – the Turkish government’s name for an alleged Gulenist terrorist group

FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) – world football’s governing body

FSA (Free Syrian Army) – a Syrian opposition group

FSE (Football Supporters Europe) – a European fan network

HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) – a left-wing and pro-Kurdish political party

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) – a jihadist terrorist organisation

MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) – a far-right, ultranationalist political party

MUSIAD (Independent Industrialists and Businessmen Association) – a non-governmental organisation of largely conservative small and medium businesses

OHAL (Governorship of Region in State of Emergency) – a state of emergency region in southeast Turkey from 1987 to 2002, during the height of the Turkish state’s war with the PKK

PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) – a Kurdish militant group

TAK (Kurdistan Freedom Hawks) – a Kurdish militant group, likely linked to the PKK

TOKI (Public Housing Development Administration) – a Turkish government-backed housing agency

TUSIAD (Turkish Industry and Business Association) – a non-governmental organisation of mostly Kemalist businesses

UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) – European football’s administrative body

YDG-H (Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement) – the urban youth wing of the PKK

‌Introduction

In Turkey’s political turmoil of the late 1970s, having the wrong kind of facial hair could get you killed.1

Left-wing and right-wing groups were murdering each other in street clashes that approached civil war. The Grey Wolves – a militia of the ultranationalist MHP – wore horseshoe moustaches; for some it represented ‘M’ for milliyetci (nationalist), or was crescent shaped, like the Islamic symbol on Turkey’s flag. Leftists typically favoured thick walrus moustaches that covered the upper lip. Beards tended to be associated with Islamists, scourge of the so-called ‘secular’ Kemalists.

The violence ended with the 1980 military coup, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s football career came to an abrupt, supposedly bearded, halt shortly after.

In 1981 Turkey’s 27-year-old future leader was captain of the semi-professional team of Istanbul’s tram and funicular company. His nickname was apparently ‘Imam Beckenbauer’,2 a reference both to his piety and to his supposed skills; like the German libero Franz Beckenbauer, Erdogan was tall and rangy – hagiographers have painted him as a similarly elegant, talented and dominant leader on the pitch. The myth goes that Erdogan was twice made offers to sign for Fene...

Table of contents

• List of Abbreviations