There is an ongoing debate about whether so-called supporters of Turkey’s Diyarbakırspor soccer club or the second team involved, Bursaspor, have a political agenda or not. According to my understanding, soccer hooliganism may indeed have a certain sociological dimension, but it is aimed at the establishment in general and does not normally focus on isolated events. Some observers reverted to dividing fans and aggressors into pro-this or anti-that political camps (some Bursaspor supporters shouted slogans of a polarizing, politicized nature, indeed), but I would be wary of reducing these incidents to a single issue. Hooliganism is nothing Turkey-specific and in order to understand its root causes somewhat better I took a look abroad.I am fully aware of the fact that only two days ago a French soccer supporter died of injuries sustained during a match in Paris two-and-a-half weeks ago, and I am not saying everything is perfect in other countries.
There are, however, some lessons that Turkish officials and fans alike may want to hear about.
Years ago English soccer had become synonymous with hooliganism, and the situation had gotten completely out of hand. I recall one incident from early in the new millennium when a club from Birmingham visited a London team. To describe the neighborhood on the night as a warzone would be no overstatement; there were mounted police and teargas everywhere.
Luckily this incident was one of the last we ever witnessed. So how did English soccer clubs manage to curb these outbreaks of violence after having endured them for nearly two decades? In the 1990s fans spread violence beyond the border whenever a local team played away.
One of the two Grasshopper public houses in central Amsterdam had become their strategic headquarters, and cross-channel travel via either the Netherlands or Belgium was their preferred method of reaching continental Europe. Then something quite remarkable happened:
Soccer clubs introduced CCTV and set up associations to deal with hooliganism as well as organizing non-match-day activities, and they employed, of course, more stewards. A database of all fans was set up in order to channel who was buying tickets for a specific match. Known offenders were disallowed from either buying numbered tickets or from leaving the country shortly before a certain match was due to be played abroad. All measures taken, together with the proactive attitude of the players and managers, made (near) certain that English as well as British soccer in general have become hooliganism free zones.
Games between the Dutch and (West) German national sides attracted considerable trouble, too. Some commentators argued similarly to the recent events in Turkey that Dutch and German supporters clashed because of the “principled animosity” they felt for each other, trying to establish a political justification for why violence erupts when both nations play each other.
So do individual hooligans have a political agenda? In almost all incidents I would dare to say “no.” Violence starts at home, perhaps even at school, definitely in your neighborhood if you grow up in a war-torn region. It features far too prominently on our television screens as well as in movie theaters and computer games. When sporting a gun or hand grenade has become street smart, why not choose your local soccer club’s pitch and run amok? Parents, teachers, film directors and, yes indeed, we in the media must use our influence to de-polarize society by setting examples; spoken and written words do matter indeed!
My viewpoint is that soccer hooligans do not necessarily carry a party political banner when creating chaos but that society failed to integrate them properly in the first place. The political dimension of soccer hooliganism thus has its basis in the social conflicts inherent in our very own societies. Clubs can only do so much as society must answer the underlying question of why young people revert to using violence to vent their anger. It seems as if the soccer pitch is simply the most convenient location for them to do exactly that.
