Turkey: Fans Tense ahead of Turkey-Armenia game

The October 14 soccer match between Turkey and Armenia is going to be a tense time for Mehmet Guzelsoz.

"Did they really have to chuck this fireball into our laps while the whole world was watching?" asks this 39-year old chairman of Texas, an 8,000-strong fan cub in Bursa, the Turkish city where the game will take place. "Why didn't they give us Turkey versus Spain?"

It's not the soccer he is worried about: the game is little more than a prestige match between two teams already knocked out of next year's World Cup finals. What worries him are the fans.
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The match comes four days after Turkey and Armenia signed protocols aimed at normalizing relations that were blighted by Ottoman Turkey's ethnic cleansing of Armenians in 1915 and Armenia's occupation of parts of Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Lauded by the West, the deal is staunchly opposed by nationalists on both sides. Long before Armenian President Serge Sargsyan's announced on October 12 that he would be attending the match, authorities in Bursa went on red alert to avert possible provocations.

"We've been pulled headfirst into politics, whether we like it or not," Guzelsoz says. "We've talked to everybody: the police chief, the governor, politicians, even the president."

On the morning of October 11, a cabinet minister dropped into Bursa's 20,000-seat Ataturk Stadium to give members of the fan club a pep-talk. "He told us to show the world we are model fans," says Selim Kurtalan, a cheerleader for the group better known as 'Boss.' "We told him that sport is about friendship. There should be no space for fights in today's world."

It's not a tone many Turks associate with the group, which got its name from the Wild West excesses of its members during the 1970s and 1980s. Thanks largely to the actions of Texas fan club members, Bursa has the dubious distinction of being the first Turkish city with a specialist sports police unit.

The reputation of Bursa fans has improved in recent years. But on September 26, violence broke out during a match between the local Bursa club and a team from the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.

When some Diyarbakir supporters failed to stand up for the national anthem that has been a fixture of league matches since a Kurdish rebellion kicked off in 1984, Bursa fans began hurling insults, rocks and plastic chairs. A 12-year old boy was hospitalized with head injuries.

Turkey's press labeled the city a hotbed of racist nationalism. Texas members blame the violence on provocateurs sitting in stands -- people who acted beyond the control of fan club leaders. "I freely admit we are not nice boys, and if they'd just call us hooligans we'd say 'thanks very much,'" says Mehmet Guzelsoz, himself a Kurd from Diyarbakir. "But we are not fascists."

His concern is that parallel efforts by the Turkish government to solve its decades-long Kurdish problem and improve relations with Armenia have "created a fertile ground for provocation."

"Texas will cause no problems [on October 14], but this isn't even our match. Who else will be in the stadium?"

Like many Turks, Texas members say the Armenian rapprochement can only move forward if Armenia and Azerbaijan reach an agreement over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian region of Azerbaijan that broke off from Baku in the early 1990s. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 to show solidarity to Azerbaijan. Re-opening it is one of a series of steps foreseen by the protocols, which now have to be ratified by Turkish and Armenian parliaments. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

On October 11, a small nationalist crowd waving Turkish and Azeri flags gathered outside the stadium to protest a ban on Azeri flags in tonight's match. "The public is being tricked," trade-union leader Fahrettin Yokus told protesters. "There are openings to [Kurdish] separatists, Greeks and the Pope, but none for the Azeri and Turkish flags." The next day, the governor of Bursa said he was lifting a ban of Azeri flags at the game.

It was a move that pleased Texas members. Yet their attitude towards the rapprochement is much less set in stone than the protestors outside.

"There is an expression in Turkish -- 'crushing wild flowers to pick the rose,'" says one Texas supporter who asked to remain anonymous. "The government is doing the right thing. But our Azerbaijan is a wild flower now. It is being crushed."

Mehmet Guzelsoz disagrees that balancing Armenia and Azerbaijan is a zero-sum game and thinks popular Turkish rhetoric describing Turkey and Azerbaijan as "two nations, one people" is meaningless.

"There are still Russian troops in Karabakh and Armenia: without Russia Armenia can't do anything," he says. "Has that stopped Azerbaijan having good relations with Russia? No. So why should Turkey have to listen to what they say?"

"There are people in this country who feed off these resentments," he says, referring to Armenia, Cyprus and the Kurdish issue. "Because if they disappear, their reason for existing will disappear too."

Texas members doubt many Armenian fans will come for the game. They intend to welcome those that do warmly, mirroring friendly scenes during the match in Yerevan last September. Texas leaders have even gone as far as to hand club members copies of 'Yellow Bride', a well-known folksong -- disputed between Azeris, Armenians and Turks - which tells of the tragic love between a Muslim boy and an Armenian girl.

"Sari gelin, haydi gelin, that's what we'll be shouting in the match", Mehmet Guzelsoz says -- 'Yellow bride, come on!'

Despite the rhetoric, Bursa authorities are taking no chances. About 2,500 police will be on duty in the stadium tonight. Buildings around the stadium have been searched individually.

As far as Texas fan club members are concerned, they can't wait for the match to be over. "That final whistle blows, and it is all over for us - politics, opening the [border] gate, opening the window, they can do what they want," Guzelsoz says. "We just want to go back to supporting our team. That is our life."