{"id":1564,"date":"2020-10-13T22:30:08","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T21:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=1564"},"modified":"2020-10-15T21:43:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T20:43:12","slug":"supporting-arsenal-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=1564","title":{"rendered":"Supporting Arsenal in Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I moved home in the same year Arsenal moved\naway from their spiritual home in Highbury, not that they or I had particularly\nplanned it that way; while Arsenal’s move involved a mere hop and a skip over\nthe Drayton Park railway lines mine took a massive leap over longitudinal lines\nto move to a house I had purchased a couple of years earlier in Turkey.  I had previously rented it out to\nholidaymakers but now felt that it was my turn to enjoy the sun, sea and sand\nthat Bodrum had to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, I was mortified that things did\nnot get off to the best of starts with my Turkish neighbours.  Silly disputes (they always involve swimming\npools in these sort of places) were being fuelled by neighbours on the other\nside.  They were from Leeds employing,\nneedless to say, dirty tactics!  However,\nwe soon put ‘dirty Leeds’ behind us to become the best of friends and football\n(or should I say Arsenal) played a big part in it.  I was and am still thankful that they are\nstaunched followers of  Fenerbahce as I\nam not sure things would have turned out quite so well had they been fans of\nGalatasaray.  I still have raw memories\nof the Battle of Copenhagen in 2000 that contrasted so sharply from the Parma\nFestival in the same city in 1994 for more reasons than what occurred on the\nplaying field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Turks, women as well as men, are\nobsessed with football and the behaviour on the terraces here provides a\nthrowback to the times fought out on the terraces in the 1970’s and 80’s in\nEngland.  I have watched Turkish matches\non television here with crowds of 57,000 ‘women only’ in attendance because\nprevious trouble resulted in the Turkish football authorities banning men and\nchildren over ten years old from being at the game!  The sight of 15,000 and more Turkish men\ncongregated behind the locked gates – presumably wondering where their dinner\nwas – was a funny sight to behold.  I was\ndelighted that I could follow all the Arsenal matches on TV and, keen to learn\nthe language of my new home, the football commentaries gave me my first lessons\nat learning a notoriously difficult language. \nI quickly picked up ‘penalti’, ‘gol’, ‘ofsayt’ and I even heard one\ncommentator refer to ‘Arsenal showboating’ in the days when Arsenal could and\ndid.  One of the amusing ways in which\nTurkish incorporates English words and phrases into their vocabulary is the way\nthey still refer to ‘gol averaji’ to mean ‘goal difference’ as if nobody\nbothered to alert them to the change in the law back in 1976!  Learning the language became much more tricky\noutside of football commentaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew for sure that all hostilities had\nceased with my neighbours when on an early visit back to England I asked them\nwhat they would like me to bring back as a gift.  I had expected a request for  a sneaky pack of bacon or a slab of Cheddar\nCheese but was rather shocked when Suphi asked for an Arsenal shirt.  Didn’t he know the cost of such things in\nEngland?  On the one hand, I felt rather\nproud he had asked for such a thing, on the other hand I knew they didn’t know\nhow expensive authentic Arsenal shirts cost, particularly when ‘genuine fake’\nshirts are available for pennies at the local markets here – even if the badges\ndo fall off with the first wash!  Like\nthe swallows and storks here, my neighbours migrate back and forth from\nIstanbul according to the seasons and the next April I was proudly presented\nwith a genuine Fenerbahce shirt.  I know\nit to be genuine as the badges are still in tact all these years and several\nwashes later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, they were to come with me on a trip\nto England which was to be their first trip ever away from their homeland.  Any special requests, I asked?  Yes, came the answer; they especially wanted\nto visit Greenwich and have a tour of the Arsenal Emirates Stadium.  I am pleased to report that they were\nmarkedly underwhelmed by the arbitrary looking mark on a brick wall to denote\nthe meridian line, but the Arsenal Stadium tour did not disappoint and they\ntalk about it to this day. A ritual has now been established over the years \u2013\nSuphi wears his Arsenal shirt when he comes to me to watch a match on the TV\nand I reciprocate wearing my Fenerbahce shirt when I go to them.  The exception to this was when we watched\nFenerbahce v Arsenal in the Champions League in August 2013 when we we decked\nout in our own colours.  They were,\nhowever, appreciative of me not over-celebrating as I struggled to contain\nmyself while watching our three nil thumping of them from my vantage point on\ntheir ‘away’ sofa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides going to watch my local amateur\nteam, Gumusluk, where the referee and other match officials regularly have to\nbe escorted off the pitch by the Jandarma, I have only been to one proper\nmatch.  In August 2014, I went to\nIstanbul to watch Arsenal v Besiktas in a Champions League qualifier.  I had stumbled across an English teacher on\nFacebook, via a connection with a Turkish student of hers, and it was clear\nfrom her postings that she was a fellow Gooner. \nShe was quick to accept my offer of tickets in exchange for a posh\nensuite room in her house for the night so off I set with details only of the\nbus-stop at which I was to meet her. \nSadly, that year, Besiktas were having their stadium redeveloped, so\nrather than attend the match at their usual home ground boasting commanding and\nglorious views over the banks of the Bosphorus near the Dolmabahce Palace, we\nhad to settle for a grey, faceless, austere concrete stadium, built in\nanticipation of an Olympics that never happened, situated in an urban wasteland\nreminiscent of the old Wembley with its surrounding trading estates.  Having collected our tickets from an Arsenal\nsteward that somehow managed to find us, we welcomed the multiple coaches of\nBulgarian Arsenal fans bused in for the match where we were greeted like celebrities\nwith questions such as \u201cAre you really from London?\u201d  We appeared to be the ‘real deal’ to them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The usual waft from burger bars outside the\nArsenal was replaced by the smoke of more nutritious looking BBQd home-made\nkofte served up with fresh tomatoes and parsley by women in headscarves.  At the turnstiles, we were searched and all\nmetal objects including loose change were unceremoniously removed from our\nbeings.  In the typical Turkish way of\nthings not quite making sense, the stallholders selling tea (no beer!) and\nsnacks would not accept Lira notes for payment – only small change!  A kindly Arsenal steward came to our rescue\nemptying his pockets of Turkish Lira for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The match itself was a dull, lifeless nil\nnil draw and not something to remember. \nThe 500 or so Arsenal fans present had come from Bulgaria or Cyprus or\njust about anywhere other than England and one of the main highlights was Jack\nWilshere and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, skirting over the large running track to\nacknowledge our support by throwing their shirts into our small crowd at the\nfinal whistle. The lasting memory of the match is that of the Besiktas\nsupporters.  An incessant cacophony of\nnoise that not only made it hard to concentrate on watching the match but\ncaused me to marvel at how the players could manage to actually play.   While the match itself was not one to\nremember, breakfast overlooking the Bosphorus the next morning certainly was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I watched the return leg in my local bar in\nGumusluk.  The bar, normally full of\nex-pats of an evening, was packed with Turks and the tension before the match\nwas palpable.  I had got there early to\nget a front seat view of the screen and found myself seated next to a young lad\ndecked out in his Besiktas colours, flanked by his mother and father.  His mother turned out to be the vociferous\nand potentially volatile one, and, I felt, likely to turn hostile at any\nmoment. I felt myself on my guard as the sole Gooner in the bar.  Thankfully, the usual Chelsea and Manchester\nUnited fans from Devon and other far flung corners of the UK were not\nthere.  The match did not make\ncomfortable viewing; we had survived an obvious penalty in the first half when\nJack Wilshere had fouled Ramon Motta and I seem to recall another shout for a\npenalty that had not helped to placate the mood in the bar.  Alexis Sanchez provided the goal that would\nsee us squeeze through the qualifying round \u2013 again in the quirkiness of the\nTurkish language they refer to ‘elimination’ rather ‘qualifying’ \u2013 and we\nmanaged to hang on and underdeservedly win the game despite going down to ten\nmen after Mathieu Debuchy was sent off 14 minutes from the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the final whistle, the young boy, under\nthe influence of his mother, was particularly agitated although even I thought\nI would be safe squaring up to a lad of no more than ten years old.  I draped my ‘half and half’ Arsenal\/Besiktas\nscarf, bought at the Istanbul tie, around his neck, murmured some consoling\nwords that I did not really mean, and made a bee line for the exit.  I was intercepted by the bar owner who thanked\nme for for my gesture reckoning I had prevented trouble breaking out.  We have laughed about this so many times\nsubsequently.  She hates hosting Turkish\nfootball matches in her bar \u2013 fights regularly break out after screening local\nderbies and that’s after consuming fifteen glasses of tea rather than the\nfifteen pints of lager favoured by the British. \nHardly profitable for a bar!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Whilst football rivalries can bring the\nworst out in people it is also a force to bring people together and I remain\ngrateful that it is a subject that enables me to connect with local people in\nmy assumed home.  Especially, as so many\nof them turn out to be Turkish Gooners these days!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I moved home in the same year Arsenal moved away from their spiritual home in Highbury, not that they or I had particularly planned it that way; while Arsenal’s move involved a mere hop and a skip over the Drayton Park railway lines mine took a massive leap over longitudinal lines to move to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1573,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions\/1573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}