Hürriyet, Turkey
Jan 30 2007

Oktay Eksi: Football chants in the wake of Hrant’s death

Let the Prime Minister have some vision. Let him deal not only with
Turkey’s various troubles, but with world problems. Let him show
other countries the true path in life….

These are wonderful wishes, are they not?

Clearly Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan must have felt this
desire, as he left to join in the African Union summit taking place
in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. He sprinkled delegates there
with great words showing a "wide-scoped vision."He drew attention in
to the ever-widening gap between the West and the Islamic world. He
called on African leaders to support the Alliance of Civilizations
project.

Interestingly though, just at the moment he was making this call for
support, his own country, Turkey, was under the siege of those who
would like to divide our nation into enemy camps, polarized by their
hatred and intolerance for eachother.

According to news this week, the usual chants heard at football games
were not enough for the fans who came to watch Trabzonspor play
Kayserispor over the weekend. The rally leaders at the match, whose
job is to yell directive chants over their megaphones, took up the
well-known chant of "Those who don’t stand up are Fenerbahce fans!"
and turned it instead into "Those who don’t stand up are Armenians!"

It is clear that the intent of these chants was not to "provoke" but
to outright "insult."

Ok, so you might respond to this by saying "What, you think that’s
something? There are usually such insults raining down on those
stadium seats that you could never repeat them at your home or to
your children!"

But I would point out that one of the peculiar attributes of those
stadium chants is that they are of the variety that can be forgotten
and left behind at the stands of the stadium. But is this "Armenian"
chant really of that variety?

Next we learn that even more worrisome things took place at football
matches in Adana and Malatya, also this weekend.

So let’s say that the reactions we saw at the Adana match were
directly in response to the banners at Hrant Dink’s funeral which
read "We are all Hrant Dink" and "We are all Armenian," which is why
Adana fans unfurled banners reading "We are all Mustafa Kemal" and
"We are all Turkish!"

But what can we say about the Malatya match? At this match, which was
between Malatyaspor and Elazigspor, there were reportedly around 400
Elazigspor fans chanting "Armenian Malatya!" before the game. (This
chant being of course a reference to the fact that Hrant Dink was
born in Malatya.) They they opened up banners reading "We are neither
Armenian nor from Malatya. We are from Elazig. We are Turkey lovers!"

You can play football at a match, but you can’t-or shouldn’t-play
with peoples’ patriotism. Because playing with patriotism means
playing with fire. And the types of people who fill football stadium
stands anyway are the types very open to provocation.

To be clear about it, we are being pulled towards exactly the sort of
backdrop desired by those who would have the people of our country
turn on eachother. We are trying hard to misunderstand eachother. For
example, we are thrilled when Germans protesting the burning down by
racists of a Turkish family’s house in the German city of Solingen
hit the streets in protest carrying signs saying "We are all
Turkish," but it is another story altogether when we do the same
things after Hrant Dink’s death. We are pushing our society towards
polarization. And in doing so, we are harming our nation.

To wit, though it’s wonderful that the Prime Minister is looking for
solutions in Africa, doesn’t he also need to sweep his own front door
step right about now?