against the backdrop of diplomatic tensions, PSG moves to the club stamped Erdogan

A drone monitors the parking lot. Around a hundred heavily armed police officers surround the hotel’s surroundings. And since his arrival in Turkey, Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) has been traveling in a neutral vehicle, not in red and blue. So much for the unusual pre-match report, as described by the special envoy of the Parisian.

On Wednesday 28 October, the team from the French capital will play in Turkey’s largest city their second Champions League match of the season (from 6:55 p.m.). A week after a home defeat against Manchester United, Paris faces Istanbul Basaksehir, the apparently weakest opponents in their group in the first round.

A match planned in an empty stadium, due to Covid-19, but already under high diplomatic tension: after having recommended to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, “Mental health exams” on the pretext that the latter defended – in memory of Samuel Paty, assassinated professor – the freedom to caricature the prophet of Islam, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called on his compatriots, Monday, to boycott the products of France.

At a press conference, Thomas Tuchel said to himself “A little sad, but not worried”. And the German coach of PSG to hope ” that there will be no overlap between sport and politics ”. The sentence seems naive about the Istanbul Basaksehir, which some people nickname “FC Erdogan”, so much the stranglehold of the Islamo-conservative leader is felt there.

AKP Bastion

A default choice, actually. In his youth, the President of the Republic of Turkey rather supported Fenerbahce, one of the three big clubs in Istanbul with Galatasaray and Besiktas. Three clubs born at the beginning of the XX^e century, “In the modern and secular districts of the city”, recalls Daghan Irak, sports sociologist and lecturer in journalism at the University of Huddersfield (United Kingdom). “If he could, it was at one of these three clubs – certainly Fenerbahce – that Erdogan would probably have wanted to be identified.”, estimates Jean-François Polo, professor of political science at the IEP of Rennes and a good expert on the links between sport and politics in Turkey.

But even such an authoritarian head of state would find it difficult to standardize the country’s most popular forums. The protest movement of 2013 was a good reminder: supporters of the three Istanbul giants had to demonstrate under the name of “Istanbul United” against the power in place, and therefore against Mr. Erdogan, then Prime Minister. “This movement lasted a short time, and that does not mean that these clubs are entirely against the government”, specifies Emir Guney, head of the sports studies department at Kadir Has private university in Istanbul.

“In our training center, there are even Erdogan’s goals that appear on the screens” Enzo Crivelli, French striker from Istanbul Basaksehir

If Mr. Erdogan finds himself today linked to Istanbul Basaksehir, it is because it is a new club. Without history or supporters. So flexible as it pleases. A club barely founded in 1990, on the initiative of the Social Democratic mayor Nurettin Sözen, and sold in 2014 to relatives of the new Turkish president.

The club then takes its current name, Basaksehir, to properly situate its link with the district of the same name: a district created from scratch in the time of the municipality of Mr. Erdogan (1994-1998), electoral bastion of his political formation, AKP (Justice and Development Party).

Color of the shirts? Orange, like that of the AKP. Club president? Goksel Gumusdag, husband of Mr. Erdogan’s step-niece. The club has mainly done business with the private hospital group Medipol, that of the personal doctor of the Head of State. Even if it means bearing the full name, between 2015 and 2019, of Medipol Basaksehir Football Club.

To build its new Fatih-Terim stadium (named after the former national coach and current coach of… Galatasaray), the club also called on the Kalyon Grup company, close to power, recalls the specialized site FC Geopolitics.

A group of supporters “1453”

On the opening day, in July 2014, Mr. Erdogan was obviously there. Former semi-professional footballer of the Istanbul Transport Authority (IETT) club, he scored three goals in a gala match. Since then, tribute from Basaksehir: ban on assigning the number 12 to any player whatsoever, the number of the triple scorer that day. “In our training center, there are even goals of him which pass on the screens”, tell The team, a candid nothing, the French striker Enzo Crivelli.

With, among others, the support of the airline Turkish Airlines, the club very quickly had the means to convince recruits (the Togolese Emmanuel Adebayor or the French Gaël Clichy, among the best known). To the point of succeeding in 2020 what only two other teams (Bursaspor and Trabzonspor) had achieved so far: depriving the Fenerbahce-Galatasaray-Besiktas trio of a Turkish league title, only thirteen years after their accession to the first division.

“President Erdogan received us in his palace in Ankara, Crivelli recalls. He gave us a watch that he signed for us with a tie. “

There remains one area in which the club is very far from competing, despite the presidential display: popular fervor. In Turkey, the attachment to the three giants of Istanbul takes precedence over that enjoyed by the AKP, all the more so in a city where the Islamo-conservative party lost the municipal elections of 2019. Apart from a group of supporters called “1453” “(The date of the capture of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet II, known as” the Conqueror “), the 17,000 seats of the Fatih-Terim stadium were already ringing hollow even before the Covid-19 pandemic.