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Champions League: Başakşehir, this Turkish club presented as Erdogan's toy

2020-10-26T05:35:52.114Z


The Turkish club, which Paris faces this Wednesday in the Champions League, is playing the event for the first time in its history.


Basically, PSG and Başakşehir are led by two heads of state, the Emir of Qatar on one side, the President of the Turkish Republic on the other.

It has been clear for six years: Başakşehir is the club of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 66, president since August 2014. That year, his party, the AKP, bought the club indirectly, thanks to sympathetic companies including Medipol.

His personal doctor manages this private hospital group.

Fahrettin Koca, has since become his Minister of Health.

But the fifth Istanbul formation to evolve into the elite has long nourished ties with the controversial politician, almost always.

The club was founded in 1990 and four years later Erdogan became the mayor of Istanbul.

His tropism for the round ball brings him closer to Başakşehir at the same time as it allows him to distinguish himself politically from the historic stables of the city, from Galatasaray to Besiktas via Fenerbahçe, considered too liberal for an Erdogan anchored in conservative positions.

“It is wrong to say that the club is thirty years old.

It is the avatar of a club which is thirty years old, but it is a very recent creation: 2014, in a precise political and urban planning situation, details Jean-François Pérouse, doctor in geography and installed for more than twenty years. in Istanbul.

Başakşehir is one of the eight new districts of Istanbul.

It was created in 2008. It has the ambition to become the new city center.

The stadium built in 2013 and the club bought in 2014 are part of this logic of promoting this new Istanbul near the airport.

In Istanbul's imagination, it is a periphery closely linked to political Islam and to Erdogan who launched the construction and development of this district in the mid-1990s. It is a creation of Turkish political Islam and a societal project.

"

"The mobilization is weak, very local and organized"

No wonder, then, that Başakşehir is nicknamed "Erdogan FC".

This causticity says it all about this totally artificial club, without past or warmth, whose enclosure has difficulty filling a third of its stands.

The Fatih-Terim stadium has less than 18,000 seats.

“The mobilization is weak, very local and organized, through a group of supporters called

1453 (Editor's note: the fall of Constantinople)

.

We see the very heavy symbolism ", adds Jean-François Pérouse, co-author in 2016 of the first biography in French of the Head of State, entitled" Erdogan new father of Turkey?

»(François Bourin editions).

For the Head of State, Mesut Özil's wedding witness in June 2019, associating his name with the club is thus a way of extending his policy, in addition to the colossal financial affair that his party carries out through the sponsorship of the club.

To his delight, the team has just won the first Turkish league title in its history, after finishing 2nd in 2017 and 2019. But these two times, he failed to reach the group stage, that he finally argues.

It all started with a defeat on Tuesday in Leipzig (2-0).

This Wednesday against PSG, in the midst of the Franco-Turkish diplomatic crisis, it will be the first match for C1 (apart from the qualifying rounds) at home for the team currently 10th in the national championship, after six days (3 defeats, 2 victories , 1 null).

Old acquaintances of European football

Promised in fourth place in the group, he will try to thwart the forecasts in the company of two old acquaintances of Ligue 1, the Brazilian right-back or midfielder Rafael and the French striker Enzo Crivelli, who went through Lyon for the first, through Bordeaux. , Angers or Caen concerning the second.

Slovakian Martin Skrtel, 35, led the defense against Leipzig in the 4-3-3 chosen by Okan Buruk, coach for two seasons of Başakşehir, born two months after Thomas Tuchel in 1973.

The former pillar of Liverpool belongs to this category of players that Başakşehir has attracted for years: names having populated big clubs and now at the end of the course.

Before Skrtel, Emmanuel Adebayor (2017-2019), Gaël Clichy (2017-2020), Mevlut Erding (2017-2019), Arda Turan (2018-2020) and Robinho (2019-2020), who has just left for Santos at 36 years old, have worn its colors.

He will remain one of the ten Brazilians passed through the club, the most represented foreign nationality in the history of Başakşehir.

Source: leparis

All sports articles on 2020-10-26

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