Turkish soccer’s financial crisis potentially sharpens political divide

By James M. Dorsey

Financially stressed Turkish soccer clubs are becoming pawns in the political struggle between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and militant soccer fans who rank prominently among his detractors as soccer pitches and university campuses emerge as major battlefields between the government and its detractors.

Critics of Mr. Erdogan charge that the prime minister is seeking to enlist clubs in much the same carrot-and-stick way that he tamed the media by exploiting financial vulnerabilities and turning Turkey alongside Iran and China into the country with the most journalists behind bars. The impact of Mr. Erdogan’s effort to restrict media independence and limit independent critical reporting was evident when last June television stations broadcast soap operas and penguins instead of pictures of mass anti-government protests on Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square in which soccer fans played a prominent role.

Soccer may however be a tougher nut to crack than the media. Soccer unlike the media has militant fans determined to thwart Mr. Erdogan’s attempts to use troubled clubs to whip them into line. Fans have defied a recent government ban on the chanting of political slogans during matches, rejected attempts by clubs on instructions of the government to sign pledges to abide by the ban, and ridiculed a government public relations campaign that portrays peaceful protest as a precursor for suicide bombings.

The government has taken similar steps to pacify university campuses, including cancelling scholarships for students who had participated in the anti-government protests sparked by plans to replace Taksim’s historic Gezi Park with a shopping mall. Turkish authorities recently arrested 25 students aged 13-19 who visited Iran on suspicion of espionage and propaganda activities. While the arrests reflected tense Turkish-Iranian relations over Syria, it occurred amid a campaign to deter anti-government activity among students.

“They can try Gezi protests in universities. People should not ruin their lives, should not have criminal records,” Turkish sports minister Suat Kilic warned last month in an ironic twist given that Turkey with its history of military coups and the Erdogan government’s crackdown on the media has scores of intellectuals and journalists with police records. Among those is Mr. Erdogan himself, who spent four months in prison in the 1990s for reciting a controversial poem.

Mr. Erdogan’s ability to whip clubs into line and employ them in his confrontation with soccer fans has been enhanced by the debt burden under which Turkish teams are laboring. Bloomberg News quoted the Istanbul stock exchange as saying that short-term borrowings of storied Istanbul club Besiktas JK, its Istanbul rival and Turkish champion Galatasary SC and Black Sea club Trabzonspor FC created “uncertainty over the sustainability” of their finances. The bourse said that shareholders’ equity for each was negative.

Galatasaray is staring at $57 million of debt due in the next year as the result of the expensive acquisition of players like Didier Drogba and hiring of Coach Roberto Mancini. Even so Galatasary with a debt-to-cash ratio of 13:1 compares favorably to Trabzonspor’s ratio of 40:1 and Besiktas’ 24:1, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“If Turkish soccer isn’t reformed, institutionalized and if all goes as it has so far, Turkish soccer is doomed to hit a wall,” said soccer economist and journalist Tugrul Aksar.

The battle over freedom of expression on the pitch was being waged as Mr. Erdogan unveiled what he termed a historic democracy package that granted greater liberties but fell short of the expectations of liberals, Kurds and Orthodox Christians and seemed to run counter to concepts put forward by President Abdullah Gul, a co-founder of the prime minister’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Mr. Gul, who is gunning for the prime minister’s job, has in recent days voiced far more liberal and inclusive concepts of democracy than the majoritarian ones advocated by Mr. Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan, who has promised not to seek a fourth term as prime minister after leading the AKP to three sweeping electoral victories, is expected to run next summer for the presidency. Many analysts suspect however that he may only keep his promise if he can turn the largely ceremonial office into an executive one.

The battle for greater freedoms also occurs as Turkey braced itself for next week’s European Union progress report that was expected to take the government to task for its hard-handed handling of the Gezi Park protests, limits on the freedom of expression and freedom of press, and the deceleration of its reform process.

In a twist of irony, anthropologist Elif Babül argueshowever that EU programs designed to bring the Turkish police in line with European standards have served to enhance law enforcement’s capabilities and better package rather than reduce its disproportionate use of force. The brutal response of the police to the Gezi Park demonstrations turned a small environmental protest into mass anti-government protests with thousands of militant soccer fans on the frontline. Ms. Babül’s somber analysis suggests that violence is inevitable in future confrontations between the government and street-battle hardened soccer fans determined to stand their ground.

“My research on human rights training programs for Turkish state officials has taught me that the meetings and workshops organized to improve the capacity of Turkey to become a member of the EU are far from unproductive, useless sites of whitewashing that help the government continue business as usual. On the contrary, these workshops, projects, and other tools of harmonization actually serve as platforms for government actors to manage the terms of EU membership, and the governmental standards that they entail,” Ms. Babül wrote.

“It is by conducting projects that state officials come to learn what these standards are really about. They are place-holders for democracy and the rule of law that are supposed to be managed strategically in order to reduce liability and perform a level of development. For instance, it is by interacting with the British police at experience-sharing meetings that the TNP officers learn what it takes to become ‘security experts,’” she went on to say.

“Rather than installing mechanisms to fight impunity within the organization, they learn that what they need is “better policing” that can be attained by building crime databases or by setting up high-tech labs to better conduct forensic investigation… Scholars who are critical of democratization and development industries have shown that programs for economic and political transition continue to produce unexpected outcomes in a variety of places, leading to more accentuated forms of exclusion, inequality, and authoritarianism. The contradictions between the stated goals and actual outcomes of these projects are inherent to the world of development,” Ms. Babül cautioned.

A just published Amnesty International report concluded that the brutal suppression of the Gezi Park protests and with it the subsequent government campaign against militant soccer fans  “significantly undermined the claims of the ruling Justice and Development Party to be delivering responsible, rights-respecting government and exposed a striking intolerance of opposing voices. The smashing of the Gezi Park protest movement has involved a string of human rights violations – many of them on a huge scale. These include: the wholesale denial of the right to peaceful assembly and violations of the rights to life, liberty and the freedom from torture and other ill-treatment. The vast majority of police abuses already look likely to go unpunished, while many of those who organized and participated in the protests have been vilified, abused – and now face prosecution on unfair or inflated charges.”

Among those facing allegedly unfair or inflated charges are 20 members of Carsi, the popular support group of Besiktas who stand accused of being members of an illegal organization. Carsi’s reply in defiance of the ban on political slogans has been to chant "everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance" during matches echoing a popular June protest tune.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccerblog.

Turkish and Egyptian ultras fight for their existence

 Besiktas fans invade the pitch

By James M. Dorsey

Much like the Muslim Brotherhood, militant soccer fans in Egypt and Turkey are fighting for their existence.

Turkish police raided the homes of and arrested 72 militant supporters of Istanbul’s top clubs – Besiktas JK, Fenerbahce FC and Galatasaray SK -- after a derby between Besiktas and Galatasary was abandoned because fans invade the pitch. Penalizing Besiktas, the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) ordered the club to play its next four games behind closed doors.

Critics of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suspect that his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) engineered the incident in a bid to further repress Besiktas’ popular militant fan group, Carsi that played a key role in mass anti-government protests earlier this year. They point to the fact security was lax at the match and that a youth leader of the AKP boasted on Facebook how he had obtained a free ticket to the Besiktas Galatasary derby and was one of the first to invade the pitch.

Turkish journalist Mehmet Baransu moreover documented links between 1453 Kartallari (1453 Eagles), a rival conservative Besiktas support group named in commemoration of the year that Ottoman Sultan Fatih the Conqueror drove the Byzantines out of Constantinople, and the AKP. 1453 members reportedly shouted ‘God is Great’ and attacked Carsi supporters during the pitch invasion.

The incident has strengthened the government’s hands in discussion with world soccer governor FIFA and European soccer body UEFA over the replacement of private security companies with regular police in stadia. FIFA and UEFA as of matter of principle favor a low key police presence in stadia. The move is part of an effort by Mr. Erdogan to gain control of and depoliticize Turkish soccer and criminalize fan groups in response to the key role they played in mass anti-government protests in June. Carsi lead the unification of Istanbul’s rival fan groups who constituted the front line in confrontations with the police.

The government has since banned the chanting of political slogans during matches and has said it was monitoring the communications of militant fans. It further is enforcing Breathalyzer tests at matches and demanding that clubs oblige spectators to sign a statement pledging to abide by the ban before they enter a stadium.

Fans have defied the ban by chanting during matches “Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance," a reference to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square, which was the focal point of the protests sparked by plans to turn Gezi Park which abuts the square into a shopping mall.

Strengthening the government’s campaign, Besiktas president Fikret Orman criticized the performance of a private security firm hired for ten matches in Istanbul’s Ataturk Olympic Stadium because the club’s own facility is under renovation. “Private security does not run away from the fans, they chase them. What we witnessed amounted to a comedy,” Mr. Orman said. He said that fans had entered the stadium without tickets. Up to 10,000 were believed to have entered the already packed stadium illegally.

Sports and youth ministry official Mehmet Baykan said “three entry points were broken into, the power supply to the turnstiles and eight ticket readers were sabotaged. 65 people have been caught with equipment which could have been used to cut the cables."

Aware that the protests had reduced Istanbul’s chance of winning the hosting of the 2020 Olympic Games despite long being a frontrunner, government officials prepared the ground for blaming the activists for the Turkish capital’s loss. The protests were a major reason why the International Olympic Committee awarded the tournament earlier this month to Tokyo. Turkish EU minister Egemen Bagis warned that “those who protested at Taksim's Gezi Park tried twice to drop Istanbul’s candidacy off the candidates list, but they failed. If Istanbul loses, it will be because of them.’’ Mr. Bagis’ comment was in response the anti-government protests and a report by Turkish activists, architects and urban planners calling on the IOC not to award the games to Istanbul.

“Prosecutors and courts continue to use terrorism laws to prosecute and prolong incarceration of thousands of Kurdish political activists, human rights defenders, students, journalists and trade unionists… Free speech and media remain restricted and there have been serious violations of fair trial rights. Great obstacles remain in securing justice for victims of abuses by police, military and state officials. … Press members are fired, contracts of academicians who supported Gezi are not renewed, film stars are searched for narcotics, and students are arbitrarily detained… The powers of the Chambers of Engineers and Architects were curbed. This was a reprisal for their role” in the protests the report said.

The report noted that police had used tear gas and water cannons earlier this year during protests at the opening of the Mediterranean Games in Mersin in southeastern Turkey. It asserted that 80 percent of the tickets for the event were awarded to government loyalists rather than to the public to prevent potential protests against Mr. Erdogan who was scheduled to attend the opening. Mr. Erdogan was booed during the 2010 World Basketball Championship finals in Istanbul and the 2011 opening of the Turk Telekom Arena stadium in the Turkish capital.

In a similar development, Egyptian officials are discussing how to deal with the ultras, militant soccer fans who played a key role in the toppling in 2011 of President Hosni Mubarak as well as in post-Mubarak protests against the military. State-owned Al Ahram newspaper, long a mouthpiece for the government, recently asked: “Will the Ultras be shown the red card after crossing the red line? Are they digging their own grave? … Football Ultras of soccer powerhouse Egyptian clubs Ahli and Zamalek have become a dangerous phenomenon… These days the Ultras are a symbol of destruction, attacking the opposition and sometimes their own kind,” the paper said.

The paper’s focus on the Ultras follows a series of incidents in which supporters of storied Cairo clubs Al Ahli SC and Al Zamalek SC attacked their clubs and players, demanding resignation of company officials. Zamalek chairman Mamdouh Abbas rejected the calls for him to step down, saying that he would only leave his post if club members adopted a motion of confidence, not in response to the “terror of the Ultras”. Abbas urged the military-backed government to take action against the Ultras White Knights (UWK), the militant Zamalek support group, whom he denounced as sports terrorists.

UWK buries one of their own

Thousands of Zamalek fans last week buried one of their members killed by security forces while trying to storm the club’s headquarters. The attempted storming occurred after Zamalek lost an African Championship match to its rival Al Ahli. ”The safe exit of the club’s board of directors after the blood of fans has been shed became impossible,” the UWK said in a statement. At the same time relations deteriorated between Ultras Ahlawy, the Al Ahli support group, and players who rejected conciliatory gestures by the fans.

Relations have long been strained between the ultras and players because the militants see them as mercenaries who play for the highest-paying club and resent the fact that they largely remained at best aloof during the anti-Mubarak protests because of the perks the regime granted them. Five Al Ahli players - Ahmed Fathi, Sherif Ikrami, Abdallah Al-Said, Shehab Ahmed and Sherif Abdel-Fadil —recently launched a campaign against the ultras following failed attempts in the past to moderate fan militancy. Relations improved briefly last year after 74 Ahli supporters died in a politically-loaded brawl in the stadium of Port Said. The players’ current campaign portrays the ultras as a threat to their safety and security.

The players as well as club officials charge that the ultras’ militancy is hurting them economically at a time that clubs are struggling financially as a result of reduced sponsorship, advertising and ticket sales because league matches have been suspended for much of the almost three years since the anti-Mubarak protests erupted. Professional soccer matches are scheduled to resume in October.

Arrest of UWK militant

In a frontal attack on the ultras who pride themselves on their financial independence, officials of Al Ahli and Zamalek suggested that they were being funded by third parties and challenged them to make their finances public. “Now it is not only firecrackers but also bird shot that is being used in attacking us. They don’t spend money on tickets anymore but spend it to destroy the club,” Mr. Abbas said. Al Ahram noted that the ultras “spend much money on their trips buying tickets and firecrackers and other tools to support the teams. Their social background doesn’t show that they have that kind of money. Their main income comes from selling T-shirts.”

Major General Talaat Tantawi, a retired military officer-turned security consultant, charged that the ultras much like their counterparts in Argentina were being manipulated by groups seeking to exploit their popularity.  “It is so easy to penetrate these groups and make use of their enthusiasm and youth. They have become easy targets to achieve political goals and to distract them from focusing on their main vision and mission which was supporting sports. Others joined in and became Ultras and are acting as we see now,” Mr. Tantawi said ignoring the fact that the ultras were politicized and steeled in years of confrontations with security forces during the Mubarak era.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccerblog.

Turkish soccer pitches re-emerge as political battlefields

By James M. Dorsey

Turkish soccer pitches have reasserted themselves as political battlefields following the death of a protester and the emergence of pro-government football support groups in the wake of mass anti-government demonstrations in June.

The revival of the soccer battlefield signals the initial failure of government attempts to regain political control of the pitch by imposing restrictions on political expression during matches, tacitly supporting  pro-government support groups, legal actions against anti-government fans and a public affairs campaign that projects protest as a precursor of terrorism.

Clashes during an Istanbul derby this weekend between rival fan groups as well as with the police cemented soccer’s role in Turkey’s political power struggles, fuelled suggestions that the government was employing its football support groups to create pretexts for further measures against Carsi, the militant left wing fan group of storied Istanbul club Besiktas JK and strengthened allegations that its rival Galatasaray FC may have played a murky role in a match-fixing scandal.

Police arrested 68 fans this weekend after supporters stormed the pitch during the extension of a home match between Besiktas and Galatasaray. The detainees were later released after being slapped with a one-year ban on attending soccer matches. The clashes erupted after a referee handed a red card to Galatasaray player Felipe Melo and ordered Besiktas coach Slaven Bilic off the field. In response, fans stormed the pitch.

Members of 1453 Kartallari (1453 Eagles), a religious Galatasary support group named in commemoration of the year that Ottoman Sultan Fatih the Conqueror drove the Byzantines out of Constantinople, shouted ‘God is Great,’ and attacked Carsi supporters, who played a key role in the Gezi Park protests in June against Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 1453 is believed to have ties with Mr. Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). 1453 spokesman Fırat Aydınus denied that his group had links to the AKP, but conceded that none of its members were arrested in connection with the clashes.

"These events were orchestrated. Melo is not the reason, he was only the means [of provocation]," Carsi said on Twitter. Opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tannkulu has asked Mr. Erdogan to advise parliament whether his government was waging a campaign of intimidation against Carsi.

The incident in Istanbul’s overcrowded Ataturk Olympic Stadium followed on the heels of last week’s anti-government protests in Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul which is home to Fenerbahce, Turkey’s most popular club. Fenerbahce fans led the protests that were sparked by claims that a police tear-gas canister had killed 22-year-old Ahmet Atakan during demonstrations in early September in the southeastern city of Hatay.

The clashes during the Besiktas Galatasaray match served to widen the gap between Besiktas’s pro-government management and its anti-government fans, 20 of which were indicted earlier on charges of being members of an illegal organization for their alleged role in the protests in June against government plans to replace Gezi Park on Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square with a shopping mall. The 20 face up to 15 years in prison under Turkey’s draconic laws against organized crime. The government has denounced protesters, including members of Carsi who united rival soccer fan groups in confronting law enforcement.

Interior minister Muammar Guler said the government would prosecute whoever had been caught on security cameras in the stadium. Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc warned that "radical measures will have to be taken to ensure that such events do not occur again."

The government last month banned the shouting of political slogans in stadia and ordered clubs to force spectators to sign a statement that they would abide by the ban. Soccer fans said the clubs had found it difficult to impose the signing of the pledge.

Government plans to replace private security companies with police in stadia have been stalled by opposition by European soccer body UEFA and world soccer governor FIFA who are against an overbearing police presence in stadia. The government insisted however that plainclothes policemen would mingle with militant fans during matches and that their activities on social media would be monitored. Fans demonstratively violate the ban by chanting political slogans in the 34^th minute of this season’s matches. Istanbul license plates start with 34.

Critics charge that the ban targets opponents of Mr. Erdogan, a former semi-professional soccer player, who dons the scarf of Kasimpasa SK, the local Istanbul club in the neighborhood where the prime minister grew up, during pro-government rallies. Kasimpasa named its stadium after Mr. Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan often likes to address crowds in stadia which government officials argue does not violate the ban that applies only to matches, not to stadia in general.

With its own stadium being renovated, Besiktas is playing in a twist of irony its home matches in Kasimpasa’ Recep Tayyip Erdogan Stadium. Carsi members unleashed a torrent of anti-government slogans in their opening match in the stadium, prompting state-owned and pro-government television channels to mute the sound of the protests. “We stand for fairness and justice. Nothing will stop us from upholding our principles,” said a Carsi member.

The government’s restrictive measures were accompanied by a campaign by the Anti-Terrorism Office and the police warning that protests were the first step towards terrorism. They issued a 55-second video featuring a young woman demonstrator-turned suicide bomber warned the public that “our youth, who are the guarantors of our future, can start with small demonstrations of resistance that appear to be innocent, and after a short period of time, can engage without a blink in actions that may take the lives of dozens of innocent people.” Throughout the video, the words ‘before it is too late’ are displayed.

Scores of fans believed to be members of 1453 scaled barricades and stadium walls to attend the Besiktas Galatasaray match. Recently amended Turkish Football Federation regulations bar supporters of a visiting team from entering the host stadium during a derby. “We have to learn that football is a game. When I came here and saw the crowd, I got goose bumps. Let’s turn football into a festival,” said TFF vice chairman Ufuk Ozerten after last weekend’s derby.

Political scientist Dogu Ergil, speaking to Zaman newspaper that is owned by Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist rival, self-exiled preacher Fethullalh Gulen, said mounting tension on the pitch was the result of delays in deepening Turkish democracy. "Society is frustrated due to the arrested development of democracy, and frustration triggers violence. Since there are no other outlets to express one's frustration, this is what happens," Mr. Ergil said.

He said successive governments, including that of Mr. Erdogan, approached democracy as a form of tutelage rather than a participatory system. "Whichever group dominates the state, it puts this system of tutelage to work. But democracy is a culture of compromise, and imposing one's opinions on others leads to frustration …  Governments in Turkey are not here to govern but to give orders," Mr. Ergil said, pointing to the ban on political slogans in stadia.

Mr. Ergil used Mr. Erdogan’s intervention last year to ensure that those implicated in a massive match fixing scandal that constituted the backdrop to a power struggle between the prime minister and Mr. Gulen would be treated leniently as an example. "There are no rules in Turkey. There is only [government] power. And things transpire the way they want them to,” Mr. Ergil said.

Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at İstanbul's Bosporus University added that Mr. Erdogan defines democracy as a ‘ballotocracy,’ a system in which the winning party caters to its followers with no regard for other segments of society. “Erdogan criminalizes every act. He accused Kurds on a hunger strike of eating kebabs; he demeaned those who protested at Gezi as thugs. He treats legitimate and democratic protests as a crime. Non-political spheres are politicized as democracy weakens, People first take to the streets, and then when that is suppressed, to the stadiums," Mr. Caliskan said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccerblog.

Turkey moves to prevent protests in stadiums and on campus

By James M. Dorsey

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has announced a series of measures to prevent soccer stadiums and university campuses from becoming major protest venues as the football season and the academic year begins. In doing so, Mr. Erdogan is taking a leaf out of the playbook of Egyptian military strongman Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and other Arab autocrats who demonize their opponents as terrorists.

In a series of recent statements aimed at students and militant soccer fans who played prominent roles in the mass Gezi Park protests in June, the government said it intended to replace private security forces in stadiums and on campuses with police forces; was banning the chanting of political slogans during soccer matches; obliging clubs to force spectators to sign a pledge to abide by the ban before attending a game; and was cancelling scholarships for students who had participated in anti-government protests.

The government said plainclothes policemen would mingle with militant fans during matches and that their activities on social media would be monitored. It also restricted the consumption of alcohol in stadiums.

The announcements were accompanied by stark statements by Mr. Erdogan, his deputy Bulent Arinc and his sports minister Suat Kilic as well as a videoissued by the Anti-Terrorism Office and the police warning that protests were the first step towards terrorism. 

The 55-second video featuring a young woman demonstrator-turned suicide bomber warned the public that “our youth, who are the guarantors of our future, can start with small demonstrations of resistance that appear to be innocent, and after a short period of time, can engage without a blink in actions that may take the lives of dozens of innocent people.” Throughout the video, the words ‘before it is too late’ are displayed.

The video followed the indictment of 20 members of Carsi, the support group of storied Istanbul club Besiktas JK that has a huge following across the country on charges of belonging to an illegal organization. Carsi played a leading role in the mass anti-government protests in June sparked by a brutal police crackdown on environmentalists protesting plans to bulldoze Gezi Park on Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square to make place for a mall. Carsi joined forces in the protests with supporters of Beskitas’ two Istanbul arch rivals, Fenerbahce FC and Galatasaray FC.

The government measures are part of a battle in Turkey for public space. With the banning in early July of protests on Taksim, protests moved to neighborhood parks across the city. In Besiktas, Abbasaga Park statues of prominent Turkish politicians, journalists and authors wearing gas masks looked down on Hyde Park-style nightly gatherings.

“Taksim is everywhere, resistance is everywhere,” was the motto of the nightly meetings. The underlying tone was one that resembled the breaking of the Arab world’s barrier of fear. United in a desire for greater freedom, protesters from diverse worldviews and walks of life displayed with chants, jokes and art a humor-laced irreverence of power. Carsi members wearing their club’s black-and-white often moderated the deliberations. They insisted that their sole ideology was opposition to repression and inequality, quoting the group’s slogan, ‘Carsi, her şeye karşı!’ (Carsi is against everything!).

Carsi’s claiming of Abbasaga Park like the protesters’ requester of parks elsewhere constituted a rebuke of the city government’s definition of who was entitled to enjoy the public spaces. At a ceremony to mark the reopening of Gezi Park in early July Istanbul governor Huseyin Avnni Mutlu warned that protests would not be allowed.

“We invite our folks, our people, our children, the elderly and families to visit the park,” Mr. Mutlu said. His implicit message was that families were the unit in society entitled to claim public space, not sub-groups like gays who had frequently gathered in the park prior to the protests. “If certain groups claim to be the public and argue that ‘This park belongs to us, we’re the owners of this park,’ we will not allow that,” Mr. Mutlu said.

In the government’s latest salvo, Deputy Prime Minister Arinc said the government measures were in response to information that fans and students were planning mass protests in September. Mr. Erdogan warned that any protests would be countered by police in what he described as the necessary manner. Mr. Kilic went a step further threatening that “those who politicize the stadiums will pay the price.”

The sports minister added that “if some groups try to infiltrate fan groups, they should know that Turkey is not a banana republic. We have fought terrorism for thirty years. We can handle this too. I do not want to be threatening, but you should know that it is not worth risking yourself and your team. Everyone must know that the law will be enforced. I hope that no one will be hurt, but this can happen. I am noting that there will be electronic monitoring in stadiums. Sports prosecutors will watch the games in stadiums, and we are introducing electronic tickets to monitor the seat of every supporter.”

The minister had a similar message for students. “They can try Gezi protests in universities. People should not ruin their lives, should not have criminal records,” he said in an ironic twist given that Turkey with its history of military coups and the Erdogan government’s crackdown on the media has scores of intellectuals and journalists with police records. Among those is Mr. Erdogan himself, who spent four months in prison for reciting a controversial poem.

Journalist Burak Bekdil reported that Şamil Tayyar, a member of parliament for Mr. Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), suggested that the government punish Besiktas if its fan disobey the ban on political slogans by seizing its stadium and turning it into a park. Alternatively, Mr. Bekdil said the government could follow rent-a-fan model of the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. Mr. Kim paid Chinese actors to attend North Korean games during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. “Mr. Kim was right. When you cannot win hearts and minds you can always rent them," Mr. Bekdil wrote.

Turkey’s battle lines are being drawn in various ways. Mr. Erdogan broke into tears last week during a television interview as a video was aired with the text of a letter that incarcerated Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed el-Beltagy wrote to his 17-year old daughter who was killed on Cairo’s Raba’a al Adawiya Square when security forces broke up the group’s sit-ins earlier this month. “I believe you have been loyal to your commitment to God, and He has been to you. Otherwise, He would not have called you to His presence before me,” Mr. El-Beltagy, who was unable to attend h daughter’s funeral, wrote. Mr. Erdogan said it reminded him of his own children who complained that he did not have time to spend with them.

To be sure, many Turks share the sentiments of Mr. Erdogan who has emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the Egyptian military’s coup and crackdown. Like the prime minister, international midfielder and national soccer captain Emre Belozoglu showed the four finger Raba’a salute that has become symbolic of Raba’a al Adawiya Square after he scored for Fenerbahce in their opening game of the season.

Mr. Erdogan failed however to express similar emotion for Ali Ismail Korkmaz, a protester in Eskisehir who was badly beaten on June 2 by men claiming to be cooperating with the police and was kicked several times in the head by a policeman. Mr. Korkmaz died on July 8 of a cerebral hemorrhage. His ordeal was documented in a video disclosed by Radikalnewspaper.

The government’s tough language follows indications that its hard-handed attempts to fend off further protests are failing. If anything, they may well be fuelling them. Fans of Fenerbahce reminded the government that the battle was not over and may have just begun when they chanted “Everywhere Is Taksim Square! Everywhere Is Resistance!” and demanded Mr. Erdogan’s resignation during a match against Red Bull Salzburg. Supporters of Ankara’s Gencerbigli FC sought to circumvent the ban by chanting ‘Political Slogan’ during a recent match. 

Writing on the T24 news website, soccer journalist Gulengul Altinsay charged that the government was introducing martial law in the stadiums. Addressing the government, Ms. Altinsay suggested that “while you are at it, why not declare in a state of emergency manifesto which slogans are permissible. If that does not work, you can fill the stands with dummies. You have no choice, this nation uses its wits when it is silenced.”

In another twist of irony, the government fears that the one Istanbul stadium named after Mr. Erdogan could become a focal point of protest. That is where Besiktas is playing its home games during the coming season while its own pitch is being renovated.

The issue is not purely symbolic. Municipal elections in Istanbul next March are gearing up to be a litmus test for Mr. Erdogan’s ambitions to swap the prime ministry for the presidency after the next parliamentary election.

“If Erdogan loses Istanbul, his power base could begin to unravel. That is why he is turning stadiums into police states. Sports has become a major battlefield. Besiktas is where it is being fought out. Erdogan is pitting Besiktas chairman Fikret Orman against Carsi who voted him into office. It’s the same strategy he used with the media exploiting their financial vulnerability,” said a prominent political analyst.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

The politics of Indonesian and Turkish soccer: a comparative analysis (with Leonard Sebastian)

Soccer & Society Volume 14, Issue 5, 2013 Special Issue: Football in Asia

Select Language​▼ Translator disclaimer

The politics of Indonesian and Turkish soccer: a comparative analysis

DOI:

10.1080/14660970.2013.792482

James M. Dorsey^a & Leonard C. Sebastian^a*

pages 615-634

Publishing models and article dates explained
Published online: 23 May 2013

Article Views: 17

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Abstract

With soccer playing an increasingly important political role in both Turkey and Indonesia, this essay seeks to highlight similarities in the politics of soccer in two parts of the world that share cultural and political traits but are geographically distant from one another.

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Turkish government bans political slogans during soccer matches

By James M. Dorsey

Turkish interior minister Muammer Güler has banned the chanting of political slogans during the country’s next soccer season in a bid to reign in militant football fans who played an important role in mass anti-government protests in June.

The ban follows the recent indictment of 94 protesters, 20 of whom are members of Carsi, the influential militant support group of storied Istanbul club Besiktas JK. The soccer fans have been charged with membership in an illegal organization.

“We are adding bad political and ideological slogans to the list of illegal demonstrations in football stands, or behavior not complying with sporting ethics,” Mr. Güler told an Istanbul sports conference. 

He said plainclothes policemen would be deployed in those areas of stadiums where militant soccer fans gather and that a tender for the installation of cameras would be issued in the near future.

The minister said the ban was an implementation of Law No. 6222 known as the Law on Violence in Sports which went into effect in 2011. The law outlaws “any slogans exceeding the limits of sports.” 

Mr. Güler said that it was “clear that political and ideological slogans do not comply with sport’s spirit. That includes profanity or non-sporting behavior. The rules are related to all of those.”

Mr. Güler said that more than 4,000 soccer fans had been investigated since the law came into effect, 2,000 of which had been banned to avert violence. “The controls will be more effective in the future,” he said. He added the government was building a databank of those charged with sports crimes.

Carsi joined forces in June with supporters of Istanbul arch rivals Fenerbahce and Galatasary to initially protect environmental protesters opposed to the destruction of a historic park on the city’s iconic Taksim Square against a heavy-handed police crackdown. The street battle-hardened fans confronted security forces as the protest mushroomed into massive demonstrations against Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s haughty and majoritarian style of government.

Officials said the ban was particularly urgent because Besiktas would be playing its home games in Istanbul club Kasimpasa SK’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan Stadium while its own stadium is under renovation.

Mr. Güler said Besiktas would be obliged to force spectators to sign a pledge not to chant political slogans before they would be allowed to attend a match. Failure to abide by the pledge could result in cancellation of season tickets.

The ban and the charges against Carsi reflect Mr. Erdogan's attempts to criminalize the fans and the protesters in a bid to cater to a traditionalist and conservative base and distinguish himself from the more modernist façade of his Islamist rival, Fethullalh Gulen, a powerful, self-exiled, 76-year old imam with a strong popular and media base and influence in state institutions like the police and the judiciary.

Mr. Gulen, shared Mr. Erdogan's criticism of the protesters and blaming of international media but in contrast to the prime minister quickly backed away from denouncing them as vandals and foreign agents. Instead he urged his followers not to underestimate the grievance underlying the protests and to accept that his movement as well as the government had not done enough to resolve social problems. 

At the same time, he sought to drive a wedge between the protesters by praising the original peaceful environmentalists demonstrating against the cutting down of trees in Taksim's Gezi Park as opposed to violent protesters, a reference to the soccer fans.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg, and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Tactical retreat: Ultras absent from protests in Egypt and Turkey

By James M. Dorsey

Militant, highly politicized soccer fans who played key roles in the toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, opposition to post-Mubarak military rule, and last month’s mass protests against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been as organizations conspicuously absent from the dramatic scenes in Cairo with the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi and ongoing smaller scale protests in Istanbul.

While endorsing participation of their members in ongoing protests in both countries, violence-prone, militant soccer fans known as ultras in Egypt and Turkey have retreated to their traditional public stance that they are not political organizations but do not stop their followers from engaging politically. It is a position designed to minimize their vulnerability as groups and shield them from being politically buttonholed.

Egyptian ultras, one of the country’s largest civic groups, adopted that position on the eve of 18 days of mass protests in 2011 on Cairo’s Tahrir Square that forced Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office. At the same time, leaders privately encouraged their members to play the key role they did in the president’s overthrow.

The past week’s events in Egypt form a dilemma for the ultras whose members populate the full spectrum of politics in the country. The ultras have a deep-seated distrust of the military and the security forces who have re-emerged in full strength as a result of the anti-Morsi protests. By the same token, many ultras oppose Morsi because of his perceived attempt to undermine the goals of Egypt’s popular revolt and his failure to reform the security sector.

Like in Egypt, rival fan groups united in Turkey last month to protect protesters and add their voice to the opposition against Mr. Erdogan. But in contrast to the Egyptians, they publicly declared their united stand as organizations under the banner ‘Istanbul United.’

Nevertheless, the tactical retreat and renewed seemingly exclusive organizational focus on soccer of fan groups in Egypt and Turkey follows incidents in both countries ostensibly designed to intimidate the fans and curb their activism.

More than 70 militant supporters of crowned Cairo club Al Ahli SC were killed in February last year in a politically loaded soccer brawl in the Suez Canal city  of Port Said that many believe was an effort that got out of hand to punish the ultras for their opposition to and vicious clashes with the police. The ultras have since then staged Port Said-related protests and stormed stadiums because of a ban on spectators attending matches.

The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) this week cancelled the soccer season because of the post-Morsi political volatility. It had earlier suspended the league because of security concerns.  

Much like the Egyptian ultras, spokesmen for Carsi, the powerful, popular militant soccer support group of Istanbul’s Besiktas JK, say they are lying low since 20 of its members were charged with being part of an illegal organization in the wake of last month’s Gezi Park protests.

As a result, Carsi denies any relationship to nightly Hyde Park style gatherings in the Istanbul neighborhood of Besiktas’s Abbasaga Park, one of multiple such public forums being held across the city. Nonetheless, Carsi members dressed in their club's black and white often moderate the Abbasaga discussions and performances organized to discuss the future of the protest movement, exchange news and listen to music.

The charges against Carsi reflect Mr. Erdogan's attempts to criminalize the fans and the protesters in a bid to cater to a traditionalist and conservative base and distinguish himself from the more modernist façade of his Islamist rival, Fethullalh Gulen, a powerful, self-exiled, 76-year old imam with a strong popular and media base and influence in state institutions like the police and the judiciary.

Mr. Gulen, shared Mr. Erdogan's criticism of the protesters and blaming of international media but in contrast to the prime minister quickly backed away from denouncing them as vandals and foreign agents. Instead he urged his followers not to underestimate the grievance underlying the protests and to accept that his movement as well as the government had not done enough to resolve social problems. At the same time, he sought to drive a wedge between the protesters by praising the original peaceful environmentalists demonstrating against the cutting down of trees in Taksim's Gezi Park as opposed to violent protesters, a reference to the soccer fans.

Carsi’s decision to bide its time did not stop small groups of fans of rival clubs from joining a demonstration in late June by some 20,000 fans of Fenerbahce who were protesting against the allegedly politically motivated allegations of match fixing. The protest demanded the resignation of Mr. Erdogan and denounced Galatasary for its alleged involvement in one characteristic of the match-fixing scandal: a struggle for control of Fenerbahce, Turkish soccer soccer's most prized political asset, between Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Gulen.

The protest came days after European soccer body UEFA banned Fenerbahce alongside rival Besiktas from competing in European championships as a result of match-fixing allegations. Both clubs are appealing the decision.

In contrast to a protest 24 hours earlier on Istanbul’s Taksim Square against Mr. Erdogan's haughtiness, grandiose urban plans for Istanbul and perceived attempts to Islamize Turkish society which confronted a large police force at the ready, security forces were nowhere to be seen during the Fenerbahce march down Bagdat Caddesi, the high-end shopping throughway on Istanbul's Asian side. A day earlier police armed with tear and pepper gas and backed up by a water cannon occupied Taksim and surrounded protesters seeking to enter the square.

Less visible was a second contrast between the two Istanbul protests: while Fenerbahce fans protested under their group and club’s banners Carsi as a group has refused in recent weeks to participate in regular demonstrations on Taksim square.

"The Gezi Park demonstrations have shown that rival soccer fans can work together. The demonstrations have put Erdogan on notice. But that's not all. They also send a message to Gulen," said one soccer fan.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg, and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Tahrir’s lesson for Taksim: Police brutality unites battle-hardened fans

By James M. Dorsey

If there is one lesson Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan should have drawn from the popular revolts that toppled four Arab leaders and sparked civil war in Syria in the last two years, it is that police brutality strengthens protesters’ resolve and particualrly that of militant, street battle-hardened soccer fans.

As police on Friday unleashed tear gas and water cannons on demonstrators opposed to the planned destruction of a historic park on Istanbul’s Taksim Square, thousands of fans from rival clubs, united for the first time in decades, arrived to protect the protesters and raise morale.

In a replay of events on Cairo’s Tahrir Square that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, thousands of fans took up positions, erected barricades, counterattacked the police and threw tear gas cannisters straight back into the ranks of law enforcement.

“It was a critical moment. Supporters of all the big teams united for the first time against police violence. They were more experienced than the protesters, they fight them regulalrly. Their entry raised the protesters’ morale and they played a leading role,” Bagis Erten, a sports reporter for Eurosport Turkey and NTVSpor said.

To be sure, Turkey is not Egypt, Taksim is not Tahrir, at least not yet, and Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey unlike Egypt has long been a pluralistic society, albeit with warts, and had a tradition of protest. Whether Taksim turns into Tahrir is as much dependent on the protesters’ ability to persevere and on whether Mr. Erdogan maintains his defiant stance or listens to criticism that is widespread rather than continueing to bank on the fact that he retains a massive base of popular support among conservative segments of Turkish society.

What started out as an effort to save trees has mushroomed into the most serious challenge to Mr. Erdogan’s decade in government that intially was marked by serious democratic reform, significant economic growth and Turkey’s emergence as a regional powerhouse. Mr. Erdogan is Turkey’s first prime minister in decades to have swept three elections with enough votes to form a one-party government.

Yet Turkey outranks countries like China, Iran and Eritrea in the number of journalists it has incarcerated. And while the gap between secular and conservative segments of society initially narrowed under his rule, Mr. Erdogan’s more recent hubris and haughtiness coupled with Islamist-tinted measures has renewed secular suspicion of his true intentions.

That suspicion together with excessive police force is what drives the mushrooming protest in a society that is more or less split between secularists and conservatives. Some secularists wonder whether the police intervention in Gezi Park does not have roots that go back to 1909 when that location was where under the Ottomans the Young Turks defeated the Hunter Brigades who were calling for the introduction of Islamic law.

What is emerging is that there are four apparent parties to the current crisis in Turkey: the secularists, Mr. Erdogan’s Islamists, the police and the military. Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist rival Fethullah Gulen, a powerful, self-exiled, Pennsylvania-based cleric, who wields influence in the police may well have seen the protests as an opportunity to undermine the prime minister. Mr. Erdogan’s party colleague, President Abdullah Gul, is viewed as close to Mr. Gulen. In a veiled reference to Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Gulen recently preached against hubris. For their part, reports circulating in Istanbul say that the military, which shares secularist suspicisions, has refused police requests for help and that a military hospital had even handed out gas masks to protesters.

Secularist suspicion is also what prompted militant, mostly secular Turkish soccer fans used to fighting each other, to unite much like they did in Cairo. The fans were driven by an instinctive dislike of the police that makes them sensitive to excessive use of force, particularly when it is aimed at suppressing legitimate expression of dissent.

Tension was already mounting between the police and the fans before their entry into Taksim Square. Police last month attacked Carsi, the militant Besiktas JK club’s support group and the most politicized of the supporters, as they marched after a final league match to celebrate the end of the season. The clash was sparked by the fact that the fans were getting to close to Mr. Erdogan’s Besiktas office near the club’s stadium.

“The intensification of police control inside and outside the stadia led the ultras to adopt a mode of military organization and a warlike attitude against the police. As a result football hooliganism qua social problem has to be regarded as the legacy of such policing,“ Italian sociologists Alessandro Dal Lago and Rocco De Biasi argued already 15 years ago in an essay about militant Italian soccer fans.

“What happened on Taksim is incredible, it is unbelievable. Two weeks ago we were discussing how divided we were, how intolerant fans of Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, Besiktas, Trabsonspor and others were. We felt the culture of football was deteriorating. Occupation Gezi Park (the Taksim Square park) has changed that,” a Turkish militant said.

On Taksim Square, the fans, taunting the police, chanted in unision:

“You can use you tear gas bombs, you can use your tear gas bombs,

Have courage if you are a real man,

Take off your helmet and drop your batons,

Then we’ll see who the real man is.”

The ball is in Mr. Erdogan’s court. Restraining his police and saving trees on Taksim are unlikely to do the trick. Mr. Erdogan will have to re-build bridges and demonstrate that he listens to those who elected him as well as those that didn’t by among other things pursuing an agenda that is inclusive rather than overtly Islamist.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Turkish soccer club pioneers new funding strategy

By James M. Dorsey

A top football club from the Turkish hinterland is cementing the Turkey’s economic shift away from the commercial capital of Istanbul to the Anatolian inland with plans to increase revenue by building a hydroelectric power station in a country with growing energy demand and no oil or gas reserves of its own.

Trabzonspor, which is competing in this year’s UEFA Europa League, has added power to funding strategy that traditionally depended on ticket sales and the merchandising of club shirts and scarves The innovative strategy was developed in advance of the European soccer body’s imposition in 2014 of financial fair play rules that will bar clubs from being funded by wealthy owners, according to the Financial Times.

The project could well spark other major European clubs to think out of the box about how they will fund themselves once the new UEFA rules kick in and merchandising and sponsorship prove insufficient, particularly for the purchase of high-priced players.

The legendary club received this month government approval for a 28 megawatt plant in the hills above Trabzon, the Black Sea city it helped make famous and that is known for its fanatical football fans and hot-blooded residents who pick a fight first and think later, according to the Financial Times. The plant is expected to cost up to $50 million and gross annual revenues of $10 million. Trabzon is considering building a smaller, second plant.

Trabzonspor chairman Sadri Sener, a local construction magnate, expects the hydro plant to benefit from the mountains surrounding the city and its usually high annual rainfall. “The club needs a guaranteed source of income, and we have the ideal conditions for hydro power,” the Financial Times quoted a Trabzon club official as saying.

Energy is a booming market in Turkey that grows by eight per cent a year. The government projects that it needs to increase installed capacity by 45 per cent from 55,000MW to  80,000MW in the next eight years to be able to meet demand.

Trabzonspor’s move into energy prepares it not only for the introduction of UEFA’s financial fair play rules but also for concerns that Turkish soccer runs the same risk of economic difficulty that the country faces. Turkey got a taste of the risks when external funding tightened last year because of the global financial crisis and the country’s currency devalued more than had been predicted.

“Turkey’s declining success in football can be mapped to economics,” a Renaissance Capital research note said early this year.

Like the economy, Turkish soccer “imports almost all their best players from abroad, and exports (only) one or two good players every year” incurring high levels of debt to attract stars, the note said. It said Istanbul clubs like Fenerbahce, Besiktas and Galatasaray operated as commercial companies that eschew competitiveness for profit.

Renaissance Capital cautioned that buying expensive but old has-beens such as former Real Madrid stars Roberto Carlos and Gut boosts merchandising, but does not add real quality to a team. The focus on sales rather than soccer performance produces the ills many Turkish companies face:  complacency and reduced competitiveness.

The proof is in the pudding. Turkey’s top Istanbul clubs have dominated the country’s soccer for decades, but failed twice in a row recently to win the Turkish league or qualify for the Champions League. The poor performance mirrors a trend in Turkish economic development as growth shifts from the country’s economic capital to Anatolia.

Trabzonspor alongside Bursaspor, among Turkey’s recently most successful teams, hail from the inland. Renaissance Capital pointed to a further trend in line with the economy: Bursa and Trabzon boast trade surpluses while Istanbul accounts for 60 per cent of Turkey’s trade deficit.

To be sure, the similarities between the economy and soccer are not absolute. In some way, Turkish soccer is more in line with its European counterparts than the economy is. Turkish soccer economics mirror those of European clubs that operate on the basis of high debt levels to import rather than export talented players.

The model in contrast to the Turkish clubs has often translated into performance for their European counterparts. One reason is that Turkish clubs have not seen the kind of influx of foreign investment, particularly from the Gulf, from which teams like Manchester City and Paris St. Germain have benefitted. Nonetheless, in contrast to the Turkish economy and most European clubs, Turkish soccer thanks to domestic demand has so far not faced problems accessing funds.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.