The players of İstanbul Başakşehir, the new champions of Turkey, emerged one by one
from the tunnel of the Fatih Terim Stadium and on to a catwalk, each with their own booming
entrance song.
It had been a miraculous journey for the club which had existed in its current form for
only six years. This was Başakşehir's first ever league championship, and only the second
time a team had won the Turkish Süper Lig outside of Istanbul's Big 3 of Fenerbahçe,
Beşiktaş and Galatasaray in 26 years. This season they became the UEFA Champions League's
newest debutants, playing in the same group as Manchester United, PSG and RB Leipzig.
It is the ultimate underdog story, but there
is a political dimension to their story too.
Başakşehir began in 1990 as İstanbul Büyüksehir Belediyesi, owned by the city's municipality.
In 2014, a group of seven businessmen bought the old municipality team and renamed it Başakşehir.
The team also played in orange and blue which
happened to be the colours of the AKP flag, the political party of Recep Tayyup Erdogan.
Although the club's CEO Mustafa Eröğüt, talking to The Athletic's Adam Crafton, is
clear that this is coincidence:
“There was a municipality mayor in 1990, not linked to AKP which did not exist then…
this mayor went to the Netherlands and liked this orange colour and a couple of months
[later] they said they were founding a sports club. He said he liked the orange colour and
wanted to take it for the club.”
When it changed ownership in 2014 Başakşehir became a privately-owned entity, which is
quite an unusual construction for Turkish football, where clubs are usually membership
associations run by presidents who are voted in every few years. With a new stadium and
money to spend they made big name signings
In Abdullah Avcı they had one of the best up and coming coaches in Turkey. They bought
local talent well and knew when to sell. Turkey international and current Leicester City midfielder
Cengiz Ünder, who Başakşehir picked up in Turkey's lower leagues, was sold to Roma
for 13.5 million euros.
According to Bora Işyar, the editor of the Turkish version of The Blizzard: “Başakşehir's
management has done well in hiring managers who fit their plans (and) have built teams
around players the big three wouldn’t even see as fringe players in their own squad.”
And now they are reaping the rewards of their
prudent management through success on the field.
But what about the political links? The current
chairman and one of the seven who invested in the club, Göksel Gümüşdağ, was an
AKP official and is related to the president by marriage.
When Erdoğan disputed last year's Istanbul
mayoral elections, forcing a re-run, Gümüşdağ was put in temporary charge of the city until
Ekrem Imamoğlu, one of Turkey's leading opposition figures, won the re-run by a landslide.
Medipol, the club’s biggest sponsor, was
founded by Dr Fahrettin Koca, the Erdoğan family’s personal physician. He was appointed
Minister of Health in 2018. Erdogan himself is a fan and famously pulled on the orange
jersey when a celebrity match was held to mark the opening of the stadium. He even scored
a hat trick, his second a tidy chip over the goalkeeper.
President Erdoğan, after all, is well known
for his love and understanding of the power of the game. His official biography states
that he was 'actively interested in football which taught him the significance of team
work and spirit'. He played and captained the municipal transport team to a decent level. According
to a former teammate, quoted in a 2002 Washington Post profile of Erdogan before he transitioned
from Istanbul mayor to Prime Minister, his teammates would call him “Imam Beckenbauer”,
partly because of his skill, partly because of his Islamic piety. He has often told the
story on the campaign trail of how, as a young player, his boyhood team Fenerbahçe tried
to sign him twice but his father prevented him so that he would concentrate on his studies.
Erdogan has gone about building a new Turkish
society and economy in his own pious and conservative image. Football has become part of that process
too. Football fans, however, are not easily tamed. Supporters of the big three number
in their millions and they have at times been fiercely vocal in their criticism of the government
– on everything from the hated Passolig ID card to the 2013 Gezi Park protests where
ultras and supporters of the big three came together in what was seen as the biggest civil
protests of Erdoğan's rule. Many suspect Erdogan aligning himself with Basaksehir may
be an attempt to redress that imbalance.
He has himself, on occasion, said that he was the founder of the team. In a 2019 interview
with TRT he said: 'Başakşehir FC is doing very well. I founded Başakşehir when I was
the mayor of Istanbul … They are doing very well.'
Just two things were missing: a title and
supporters.
A new, much more pious fan group was set up that, unlike the big three's ultra groups,
eschewed violence and alcohol. It was called 1453, named after the year the Ottoman's conquered
Istanbul. “The neighbourhood resembles the fan group,” said Burak Bilgili, one of the
1453's founders. “We are a gentle people. Fair people. Respectable people. We don't
believe there should be swearing or violence in the stands. We never swear and we never
commit violence.”
But it was a tough job. Attendances at the Fatih Terim stadium could fall to just 2,000
a game, something which Erdoğan noticed when he visited the Başakşehir district’s local
AKP branch.
But the sparse crowds might have not been a bad thing after all. After stumbling during
the final weeks of last season, Başakşehir finally won the title in a Covid-19 hit 2019/20
campaign, played behind closed doors. As the Swiss international Gökhan Inler told the
BBC World Service's World Football Show, they had got used to playing without fans: “The
last three, four months the big clubs did not have supporters. We play between 4,000
and 10,000 at home and at away games not so many. We are used to playing like this for
many years! We played against Trabzonspor, there were no supporters. Usually in Trabzonspor
the stadium will be full. And then we feel the pressure! But now? Without fans, we draw
the game.”
And so the title was won and the players were honoured. The entire squad was also invited
for a rare meeting at the presidential palace in Ankara.
For the club's CEO Mustafa Eröğüt talk
of a link between the club and the state in the wake of their historic triumph are sour
grapes. Talking to The Athletic he said: “There is no organic relationship between the club
and the President. There are some people close to him and some not close to him. We have
some government sponsors and some private sector sponsors, just like all other clubs
in Turkey. OK, our stadium was made by the government but there are 25 other stadiums
made by the government and long-term rented to the clubs, including big name clubs. I
cannot agree with these protests”
Başakşehir has had a mixed start to the season but fans aren't likely to return until
next year at the earliest. And even then, there's a chance the stadiums might not return
to that same intensity for years, if ever.
Maybe it's already Başakşehir's world, and we're just living
in it.