What is going on with Turkish Football?
Over the last few years, Turkish football has had its fair share of drama and scandals. Each team's executives and members go on a rampage after a crucial "referee mistake" that cost them the win. Presidents and spokesmen of the teams go on to say that the league, the federation, and the Central Referee Board (MHK), even the broadcasting company are corrupt or biased.
Growing Issue
The allegations and the voice of the responses from these representatives have been increasing while the tones becoming more harsh, year by year, coming to their peak form today. After every game (even if it is not that team's game), representatives go and give speeches about how they would not let this league be finished, and how the referee "gave a boost" to the other team when the other team comes up and claims the opposite. This has come to a point where people started calling others out by saying that they are related to harmful organizations.
Social Media
This also shows its effect on social media, where toxicity and trolling reach to the masses. After every somewhat controversial game, trend topics like "#kadikoydekaragece" go to the top of Turkish Twitter trends. People argue left and right with close to no logical sense, just thinking about how their tweet or comment means "helping out their team" in social media presence. Neutral people are being called out "secretly rooting for that other team" after making a point that has ground truth. Overall, it's a huge mess. Here, most of the discussions are made on positions where the referee of a match possibly made a mistake.
Did Video Assistant Referee (VAR) Change Anything?
No.
Even if yes, it made the people question: Let's say the main referee made a mistake in the field, which is somewhat acceptable, what is VAR's job here if they will not act on the mistake? So, at this point, it makes people think that there is something fishy going on since the mistakes (big ones) keep on happening.
What People Do Respect?
While there are still lots of arguments outside the pitch, most of the time where there is a crucial mistake "allegation" is created, people go and look for programs where experts or ex-referees evaluate the positions with logic and refer to the current rules of football while explaining "how they would approach" to this position (e.g. Trio program from BeIn Sports). People respect that, but it is easy to forget it after a week since the representatives of the teams "literally unsee" these evaluations and keep talking about how "the referees have been butchering them the whole season".
Current Situation of the Teams
From the biggest to smallest teams seek their rights and justice when some kind of mistake happens against them, the main rivalry is between Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray this season, where they are the top two teams on the leaderboard. I would like to simply elaborate on the views of these teams to finalize.
Fenerbahçe: President Ali Koç is the person who talks the most and has the biggest impact on uniting Fener fans under one view. He mostly talks about the games that went unfavorable to them, talks about a referee that helped out Galatasaray is rewarded by getting a match next week (usually if a referee's performance is bad, they will not get assigned to matches the next few weeks), and says that they have the numbers of Fener getting most of the bad calls compared to Galatasaray. He also says that Galatasaray has a whole operation going on with social media manipulation.
Galatasaray: Vice President Erden Timur is the person who does the talk for Galatasaray. He claims that Ali Koç's speeches affect the referees, and get them scared from making a decision against Fener. He also says that the league is corrupted but against them. He keeps on saying that all these allegations on Galatasaray are a threat and should not be treated kindly.
I know that this week's blog is a little different, but I wanted to get you more familiarized with the topic of current controversies and discussions in Turkish football, thanks for bearing with me.
Thanks for reading!
Oğuz Arslan
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