“Mazbatayi ver, mazbatayi ver, mazbatayi ver, Imamoglu’na!”
The Besiktas fans are chanting before their home match against local rivals Istanbul Basaksehir and it is very, very loud.
Football in Turkey’s biggest city always means colour, passion and noise, but Saturday’s game was being played in special circumstances, between two very different clubs.
Istanbul is going through tense, uncertain times. Recent local election results show President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s favoured candidate was defeated here, but his ruling party have refused to accept the outcome and ordered a recount.
The chant the Besiktas fans were singing calls on Erdogan to “hand power to Ekrem Imamoglu”, the ‘winning’ candidate who was at the match, sitting beside Besiktas’ chairman.
This is Turkey in a nutshell – politics and football are intertwined, there is no escaping it. As for Basaksehir, league leaders and a new power on the scene, they have close ties to Erdogan.
Founded in 1990 as an amateur side, they rose rapidly through the leagues and reached the top flight for the first time in 2007.
But it was in 2014 when their fortunes really started to change. That was when a group of businessmen close to Erdogan’s ruling AK party took over.
Former Turkey manager Abdullah Avci was appointed manager and Goksel Gumusdag came in as club president – he is married to the niece of Erdogan’s wife Emine.
While Tottenham rolled out club legends Paul Gascoigne and David Ginola for the opening of their new ground in March, Basaksehir fielded Erdogan himself as they unveiled a new 17,000-seater stadium in July 2017.
A former semi-professional player, Erdogan scored a first-half hat-trick in a 9-4 victory for his side in a remarkable display, with newspaper Daily Sabah likening his second goal, a chipped effort, to something Barcelona’s Lionel Messi would score.
Erdogan wore the number 12 shirt in that game and was voted in as the country’s 12th president a month later. Basaksehir paid tribute by officially retiring the squad number.
