Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was photographed in 2019 proudly holding a jersey with his name to celebrate 25 years as a member of Fenerbahçe Istanbul football club. Four years later, Fenerbahçe supporters are calling for the Turkish president to be ousted.
Chants of “Erdoğan step down” rang out in Istanbul’s Şükrü Saraçoğlu Stadium last Saturday as Fenerbahçe fans accused him of “lying, lying, lying” during his two decades in power. At Beşiktaş, another big Istanbul team, fans filled the pitch with colorful teddy bears for children in the earthquake zone before singing anti-government songs.
“Something is boiling over,” said Yağmur Nuhrat, a professor at Istanbul Bilgi University who studies the intersection of football and society, adding that the “devastating” earthquake came at a time when Turkey was already facing a “major economic crisis”.
Even for a strong leader such as Erdoğan, there is no doubt about the political importance he exerts through Turkey’s football obsession. The day after the chants, a local authority prevented Fenerbahçe supporters from attending this Friday’s match in the central city of Kayseri. Some fans have promised to “bury the wrong person in the ballot box”.
The vocal opposition among supporters of Turkey’s two most famous football clubs shows how Erdoğan is grappling with the fallout from the earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in his country and Syria.
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Erdoğan apologized for the government’s initial stuttering response to the quake, which destroyed more than 100,000 buildings in a large swath of southern Turkey. Critics blame Erdoğan for unenforced construction regulations and a sweeping amnesty program for building mistakes that has increased the death toll.
This week’s video of Erdoğan giving money to children in earthquake zones was mocked on social media, sparking discontent across the country. This is as Erdoğan has mounted his toughest re-election bid in his 20 years in power, with the worst inflation in decades eroding his popularity.
But Erdoğan has long been blessed by his opponents, who have repeatedly failed to implement changes in the public mood. A long-running effort to unite Turkey’s opposition came to a head on Friday after members of the second-largest coalition, the Good Party, rejected plans for a single candidate to challenge Erdoğan. Analysts said this could provide the incumbent with a boost.
Defiance on the terraces comes at some personal risk for fans. Nuhrat said “stadiums are always political” but criticism from the government has been rare in recent years, especially after a system requiring fans to swipe a biometric identification card to enter matches came into force in 2014.
The government has cracked down on the protests. Youth and Sports Minister Mehmet Muharrem Kasapoğlu said this week that “the sports field is not a political field”, adding: “provocations will not be allowed”. The Union of Turkish Clubs and several teams, including Kayserispor, have supported the government’s stance.
Fenerbahçe has said that some fans received a ban from watching live sports because they were accused of criticizing the government during last Saturday’s match. His lawyer is looking into the matter.
Soccer is an important part of Turkish popular culture and the public backlash is especially striking for the president who is a diehard fan. Erdoğan started playing football at a young age and later joined a semi-professional team. He took to the field during the 2014 election, scoring a hat-trick in the Istanbul match with celebrities.
Özgehan Şenyuva, a professor at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University who has written about sports in Turkey, said Erdoğan’s clash with fans had echoes of the 2013 Gezi demonstration. .
Fans of the Istanbul team shunned their fierce rivals, joining the government opposition during Gezi. The sight of Fenerbahçe fans storming the Bosphorus bridge in Istanbul along with other protesters “changed the protest”, Şenyuva said.
The subsequent Gezi uprising marked a violent turning point towards a more authoritarian style of government for Erdoğan. Protests in football stadiums have yet to develop into a broad movement. But there are signs that he has caught the feeling of sadness, and a little cut between Turkish classes and regional divisions like sports.
Messages saying “suits without audiences, universities without students” have circulated on social media, referring to Fenerbahçe’s ban and the government’s post-quake decision to move higher education to distance learning.
“I feel like . . . it’s not easy to die,” said Nuhrat.
adam.samson@ft.com