Great Ambition, Great Disappointment

Turkey’s Opium: Football

Great Ambition, Great Disappointment

Football is an integral part of daily life in many societies around the world. In Turkey, however, this passion takes on an altogether different dimension — particularly at the international level. As the heir to a collapsed empire, Turks experience football as a visible expression of a deep historical inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West. A victory against a Western opponent is not a mere match result; it is an epic written, a battle won. The headlines and commentary that follow such victories say it all: “Turkish power”, “We crushed them”, “We taught them a lesson”.

The television commercials produced for World Cup campaigns offer a particularly revealing window into this collective psychology. Any attentive observer would recognize in these advertisements the chauvinistic sentiment, the hostility toward the West, and the visual language of an inferiority complex playing itself out on a football pitch. These commercials deserve serious academic attention as cultural artefacts. A similar spirit animated the promotional video released ahead of the 2026 World Cup, jointly produced by the Turkish Football Federation and the ruling AKP party. Replete with footage of Turkish-made military drones — the Bayraktar TB2, which had become a symbol of nationalist pride — the clip conveyed the impression that Turkey was marching not to a football tournament but to a battlefield.

Yet for all this fervour, mass belief, and nationalist excitement, football is not a field in which Turkey has achieved sustained international success. Setting aside the third-place finish at the 2002 World Cup and Galatasaray’s UEFA Cup victory in 2000, neither the national team nor Turkish club sides have left a lasting mark on European or world football.

Football holds strategic importance for political power precisely because it is so effective at stoking chauvinistic sentiment and channelling mass energy. The presidency of the Turkish Football Federation has therefore never been left solely to the discretion of clubs and delegates. For the past quarter century, the decision has effectively been made by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Football’s function goes well beyond nationalist gratification or venting rage at the West. Borrowing Karl Marx’s famous phrase — he used it to describe religion — football in Turkey today serves as the opium of the people. It is the primary arena of interest, passion, and argument for millions of men and a significant number of women. From the start of the week, the coming weekend’s fixtures are the dominant topic of conversation; after the matches, hours are spent on analysis and debate. In a country where the rule of law has been hollowed out and court verdicts are widely ignored or rendered irrelevant, the decisions of football referees are debated for days. Corruption among judges rarely makes the news, but allegations of bribery or match-fixing involving referees become national obsessions.

Football also serves as a pressure valve for the anger that cannot safely be directed at political authority. Millions, whether in the stadium or in front of their screens, discharge their accumulated frustrations by raging at a referee’s call, a player’s mistake, or a manager’s tactical choice.

Football is also a source of mass belonging. To be a Galatasaray supporter, a Fenerbahçe fan, a Beşiktaş faithful, or a Trabzonspor devotee is to carry an identity and share a common ground. People with sharply opposing political views can set aside every difference and unite under the same club colours. A telling illustration: the staunchly secularist billionaire businessman Ali Koç — president of Fenerbahçe — has been seen sharing baklava with former minister Mustafa Varank, a political Islamist and fellow Fenerbahçe supporter.

The political dimension of football is visible not only in the atmosphere but in the direct exercise of power. President Erdoğan and his son support Fenerbahçe, while his son-in-law and former Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak is a Trabzonspor partisan. It has been widely alleged that during his time in office, Albayrak channelled significant public resources toward Trabzonspor, playing a direct role in the club’s championship title. Erdoğan, meanwhile, made no comparable intervention on behalf of Fenerbahçe — because Fenerbahçe has long been a symbol of Kemalist identity and resistance, one of the few institutions that has resisted full capture by the Erdoğan era.

Football is discussed and debated as intensely as politics in Turkey — but it is considerably safer. As long as one does not directly criticise Erdoğan or the AKP, virtually anything can be said about football without consequence. Moreover, football commentary requires no special training or expertise. In Turkey, the number of self-declared football analysts and armchair managers is roughly equal to the number of viewers.

In today’s Turkey, where mainstream media has been largely brought under AKP influence, those who consider themselves opposition-minded increasingly rely on YouTube channels for news and commentary. Yet no political content producer comes close to matching the audience figures of football analysis shows. Every day, millions of people — young and old, men and women — turn to their screens for match previews, post-match analysis, and transfer gossip.

The rivalry and drama between clubs also functions as a useful distraction tool for the government. At a time when chronic inflation, deepening poverty, and an erratic foreign policy are straining public patience, football keeps millions focused elsewhere. Beyond distraction, football has until recently served as a vehicle for personal enrichment within AKP-aligned elite circles. The money circulating through illegal betting networks and match-fixing operations is estimated at between 100 and 200 billion dollars, with political elites reportedly taking a share of this vast sum.

The government has extended various forms of support to clubs — land grants, tax concessions, and state-funded stadiums — yet the resulting competition has pushed Istanbul’s three major clubs to the brink of financial ruin. Clubs paying foreign players annual salaries of 10–15 million euros, and spending up to 50 million euros on a single transfer, carry debts estimated at 500–600 million dollars. There is no clear exit from this debt trap, yet extravagant spending continues unabated.

Against this backdrop, Turkey managed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup — ending a 24-year absence. There were genuine grounds for optimism. A talented generation had emerged, reminiscent in quality of the 2002 squad. Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Kenan Yıldız have made significant impacts in Serie A; Orkun Kökçü has shone in the Portuguese league; Arda Güler, who rose through the ranks at Fenerbahçe before joining Real Madrid, drew widespread admiration in the Champions League. Goalkeeper Uğurcan Çakır’s Champions League performances put him on the radar of major European clubs. Right back Zeki Çelik plays for Roma; left back Ferdi Kadıoğlu for Brighton in the Premier League. However, the central defence and attacking line remained clearly below that standard. The most glaring deficiency was in the striker position: since Hakan Şükür — Turkey’s greatest ever goalscorer — no comparable centre-forward has emerged.

The psychological pressure generated by inflated expectations can itself become a liability. Turkey lost 2-0 to Australia, a result widely seen as unthinkable beforehand, failing to create a single clear chance. A similar pattern repeated itself against Paraguay. Those who had woken at five in the morning to watch the matches, or who had travelled to San Francisco specifically to attend them, were left bitterly disappointed. Paraguay took an early lead — aided by an error from Turkey’s goalkeeper — then survived the second half with ten men, defending intelligently to eliminate Turkey with that solitary goal. A squad featuring players from Inter Milan, Juventus, and Real Madrid thus became only the second team to exit the tournament, after Haiti, without scoring a single goal. Those who had confidently predicted a quarter-final run or better were left without answers.

It is often said that after great military defeats, French intellectual life underwent a sustained process of critical self-examination that allowed the nation to absorb the trauma and rebuild. The conditions for any such reckoning do not currently exist in Turkey. Media institutions and universities have been substantially stripped of their independence. And yet even an early World Cup exit serves a function for the ruling order: millions will spend weeks debating the causes of failure, pivoting away from politics and economics and back toward football — and filling their hours with YouTube analysis shows in the process.

For now, Turkey’s public conversation is dominated by the national team’s post-tournament review and Fenerbahçe’s anticipated transfer activity. The early exit has caused deep disappointment, but transfer news and upcoming UEFA qualifying matches will shift the agenda quickly. Fenerbahçe’s European campaign, after all, is not merely of interest to its own supporters — millions of Galatasaray, Beşiktaş, and Trabzonspor fans will be watching closely, each hoping for a stumble.

Victory can always be deferred to another day.