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Saluting Turkish internationals; Racists in Bulgaria; a St.Pauli professional who is no longer acceptable to his employer because he sympathizes with the Turkish military in the offensive against Kurdish troops in northern Syria; Like two German national players, also on the subject of Turkish military. This is a short summary of the past days.
Football has often been used as a political vehicle, but rarely at a pace like this. That's hard to bear sometimes. And some players in the football world often do not even seem to really understand what's actually happening around them.
Anyone who can express himself politically in football without having to expect major problems is often a matter of interpretation. At the moment, the West is outraged by the Turkish military offensive in northern Syria. And because Turkish internationals are now saluting for the second time after a goal to honor their soldiers in the war effort, many are outraged by them.
Uefa has announced that it will investigate the case. Some now demand from her drastic sanctions against the Turkish Federation. It would be a sign that football should not become the vehicle of war propaganda. And that would be welcome.
It takes a political awakening of the players in football
But locks, fines and similar measures are the last step. What it takes is a stronger political awareness of all involved.
Football is as complicated today as the world around it. He is not just the game. He is politics, he is economy. The playing field crosses its own borders into many spheres of life of society. Even in football, the major issues of our time are negotiated: war and peace, racism, integration and flight (keyword Bakery Jatta).
Therefore it needs a political awakening of its actors. Anyone who has such a great impact on many people as football professionals desperately needs some political understanding in order to be able to assess the consequences of their actions.
When the German national players Ilkay Gündogan and Emre Can liked the Salutierfoto of their Turkish friend Cenk Tosun (and later deflated), that probably did not testify to nationalist conviction or even war glorification. At least both emphasized that quickly. It testified to a political stupidity that astonished especially the clever Gundogan with his history of the Erdogan photo of 2018. If both players had been politically aware, it probably never would have been the likes - and thus never the furor that followed.
Even idleness is political
After all, the German Football Association seems to have woken up a bit. In the past, the DFB overslept the right time to respond to issues of political relevance. This time, the association quickly tweeted a photo. All players, national coach Joachim Löw and the supervisors were on display. The caption read: "Together for openness, diversity and tolerance, against every form of violence and discrimination."
A spongy formulation without concrete reference, but at least a political statement of an association that has made it otherwise comfortable behind the cover of the apolitical than any other - and in the past either long silent or met with his statements unerring the wrong tone Like Julian Draxler with his open letter at the Confed Cup 2017. Had the DFB and Draxler possessed more political wisdom at that time, the praises of Russia would never have been given.
So far it is not known why the Bundesliga professional Kaan Ayhan stayed away from the salute of his Turkish national team. Because he did not want to get involved in the war, or because his club, Fortuna Dusseldorf, had banned him before. But the case shows that even doing nothing in football can be quite political. And that's why it's better to think about it in advance.
