Why can’t Turkey qualify for the World Cup?
There is a famous panel from a Turkish comic that lampoons the typical plight of the country’s national soccer team. “So what happened? Is it impossible for Turkey to qualify now?” one … Continue reading
Election Day for a Beleaguered Turkish Soccer Power
ISTANBUL — Ahead of an election on Sunday that could shape the fate of one of Europe’s most storied soccer clubs, the opposition candidate’s supporters packed a hall here. They … Continue reading
How football is saving the lives of Turkish girls in Malatya
Malatya is the world capital of apricots. Orchards full of stout apricot trees surround the Turkish city. On some downtown streets you can smell apricots on the breeze. There are … Continue reading
Understanding Authoritarianism Through Soccer
In the 1970s, long before he became Turkey’s most powerful man, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a semi-professional soccer player. He played for IETT Spor—a team linked to Istanbul’s public transport authority—and … Continue reading
The Syrian football star caught up in revolution and forced into refuge
When the revolution broke out in 2011, Firas al-Ali was playing in Damascus for Al Shorta, and for the Syrian national team. “Society treated me like a superstar,” he told … Continue reading
Greek game in crisis and Nottingham Forest’s Marinakis is at the heart of it
In 2012, an ageing, nondescript tanker was renamed Noor 1 and promptly became a so-called ghost ship, its routes no longer logged. After it was intercepted off the Greek coast … Continue reading
The New Greek Oligarchs’ Path to Power: Soccer
Most Greeks had never heard of Evangelos Marinakis before he bought the soccer club Olympiakos in 2010. Now there’s hardly anyone who doesn’t know him. On a wall overlooking the multicolored containers … Continue reading
A Fight is on to Save the Sounds of Turkey
For years, the cacophony of Istanbul’s Kumkapi fish market evoked happy memories of childhood for Pinar Çevikayak Yelmi. As a little girl she would wander around the stalls with her father … Continue reading
The 78-year-old rising star of Turkish music
At a church in Stuttgart, Germany, Gökçen Kaynatan was preparing to perform “Cehennem Yolu” (“Road to Hell”). It was suggested that anyone with a heart condition should leave. Then the … Continue reading
Love songs of Turkish football
Many football chants are homages, jokes, vulgar comments regarding the opposition’s mums, and calling each other “sons of bitches” and suchlike. Yet, there is often also a poetic intensity to the … Continue reading
Illicit football: The Black Stockings
Photographs of Fuat Husnu Kayacan show him dressed impeccably in an Ottoman tunic and fez, sporting a sharply waxed moustache, looking every bit a young man of the establishment. He attended … Continue reading
