Bursa, Diyarbakır: War at home, war in the world

There have been many occasions which remind me of these words, and the latest one was the stories about the soccer match between Bursaspor and Diyarbakırspor last Saturday.

You are born into a nation. Similar to that, although it is possible to change it or sometimes choose it, as far as I have observed you are born into a soccer club, too. The members of both imaginary communities have the right to be proud of their membership in their community. However, when the members surpass the limits and turn it into something more than life and death, then they are not called members of a community anymore but rather hooligans and racists, sometimes both, and there were some of them at the Diyarbakırspor-Bursaspor match.

It is not uncommon at Diyarbakırspor games for fans from the other team to shout slogans like “PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] out!” They imply that every supporter of the Diyarbakırspor is automatically a supporter of the PKK, a terrorist organization.

But to shout such a slogan, until now, was considered “normal” by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF). I think the federation is still unable to understand the seriousness of the problem and finds it difficult to call those kinds of behavior racist or at least discriminative.

Unfortunately, in this country the administration and people in positions of responsibility have a habit of ignoring serious issues.

 The TFF administrators, just like the policemen who try to ensure the reconciliation of the beaten wife and the beating husband until the next beating, tried to ensure reconciliation between the two sports club by asking their chairmen to shake hands.

The announcement of Diyarbakırspor Chairman Çetin Sümer that he would withdraw his team from the league did not even wake the federation administration up, and they levied a minor fine of just TL 100,000 on Bursaspor.

The TFF has been reluctant to punish racist and discriminative approaches in the past. There have been many examples of it, such as the Galatasaray fans who shouted anti-Semitic slogans at an Israeli player or Trabzonspor fans who wore white hats similar to the hat worn by the killer of Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink. They were not punished, either.

 The second refrain of Turkish officials when the subject of discrimination, xenophobia, racism and even violence against women comes up is that “these are individual examples, not common incidents.”

 For the Bursaspor-Diyarbakırspor confrontation, the same “these are individual incidents” discourse was there. But how can it be individual? To look at the pictures is enough to understand: A huge group of fans carrying signs proclaiming “How happy is he who says I am a Turk,” and they are surrounded by other fans carrying white banners, on each of which is written “Turkey.”

 Interestingly enough, Bursaspor, from the very beginning, had the upper hand in the game -- there was no reason at all to be angry at Diyarbakırspor from a football point of view, but still it was done, and without proper punishment.

 Well, I am not a soccer fan, nor a fan of nationalism or conspiracy theories, but when I saw a small news item at the Cihan news agency this week I was chilled.

According to the story, the Turkish Public Workers' Labor Union's (Kamu-Sen) Bursa branch collected 50,000 signatures within two days for their campaign, “We don't want Sarksyan in Bursa.”

They mean Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan, who was invited to watch the World Cup soccer game between Turkey and Armenia.

The fact that a workers union can launch this kind of campaign infuriates me, but to think about the possible “individual incidents” in Bursa which have not been punished enough for the discriminatory behavior towards Diyarbakırspor players and fans makes me think that some people who want peace neither at home nor in the world are working very hard.

Let's hope and pray that soccer is not a matter of life and death, but a matter of friendship and joy.