Turkish soccer is basking in its recent success and harmony - and trouble awaits anyone who spoils the party, writes Arminta Wallace in Istanbul
Prima donna pouting, missed drugs tests, vicious slanging matches, a shooting and at least one case of alleged serious sexual assault - we've had them all in Istanbul this week. Turkish soccer hooligans hitting the headlines again? Not exactly. This is England's footballing finest we're talking about. As the hours tick by towards kick-off in tonight's crucial Euro 2004 qualifying match at the city's 43,000-capacity Sükrü Saracoglu stadium, the news emanating from the Premiership in general - and the England international squad in particular - has been uniformly that of men behaving badly. And the Turks - cast, for once, in the role of the good guys - are loving it.
On Thursday, Turkey's two full-colour football dailies, Fanatik and Fotomaç, gleefully reported who said what to whom in the Rio Ferdinand "doping boykotu" saga alongside wholesome pictures of beaming Turkish players - accompanied by wives and assorted offspring - at, of all things, a picnic organised by team manager Senol Günes.
"From now on we will be thinking of nothing but the game," Günes assured the assembled hacks, flashing his inscrutable smile. The smiles intensified yesterday as reports of the peace, love and togetherness flowing from the Turkish camp were juxtaposed with collages of British tabloid headlines concerning the arrest of a Leeds player on rape charges and a drive-by shooting of a footballer in Liverpool, most of which - including the succinct summing-up of the situation by the Star: "Berks v Turks" - needed little or no translation.
Turkish has a word for this - or rather, two words. The first, which is being freely applied to the three lions brigade in every newspaper, TV sports report and casual conversation around the city centre, is moralsiz. Literally translated it means "lacking in moral fibre" but in spirit, it's much closer to "sick as a parrot". The second, imported into the Ottoman Empire from England along with the game of soccer itself, is gentlemanlik. Which needs no translation either - and which, needless to say, does not apply at all in this instance.
Gentlemanly demeanour is, however, precisely what the Turkish Football Federation has been urging from the home fans who will form the vast majority at tonight's sold-out game. The English FA lost its ticket allocation following a series of unsavoury scenes involving hooliganism of one sort or another, including - when England and Turkey played each other in Sunderland in April - sporadic violence and the persistent chanting of such delightful ditties as "I'd rather be a Paki than a Turk". Ironic, this last, considering that only fans in possession of valid Turkish identity papers will be allowed into the stadium this evening.
While a draw would suffice to take England through to the Euro 2004 finals in Portugal next summer, Turkey needs to win to avoid going into the play-offs, and . . . well. The sound of more than 40,000 Turks getting behind their team will be music to the ears of the millions of others who have been unable to get tickets and who will be watching the game in all sorts of places, from bars on the still-baking Mediterranean coast to remote mountain villages in the east of the country.
Not that the Turks have, in the past, been slouches in the football discord department. Club coaches are routinely stoned en route to and from away matches, and a riot at a mundane mid-table clash in Izmir in August ended with one fan dead and 50 people, including eight policemen, injured. The Turkish FA was fined as a result of crowd trouble during the Euro 2004 match against Macedonia in June - and tragically two Leeds United fans were stabbed to death ahead of a UEFA Cup semi-final between Leeds and Galatasaray in Istanbul in April 2000.
Much has, however, changed in Turkey in the meantime. The phrase "Turkish football" may once have been synonymous with the "welcome to hell" banners at the now-defunct Ali Sami Yen stadium; to the up-and-coming generation of soccer fans, however, it has more to do with Turkey's triumphant third place at the last World Cup.
At club level, Turkish teams are no longer the outlandish exotica of yesteryear; Galatasaray are now a regular fixture in the Champions League, and after the 2-0 defeat of superstar-strewn "Chelski" at Stamford Bridge last week, things are looking reasonably promising for the current Turkish champions Besiktas as well.
Politically, too, Turkey has its eyes fixed on the future. And with major legislative and judicial reforms being pushed through by the single-party government on an almost monthly basis in anticipationfinally, ofmembership of the European Union, the authorities here are determined to make sure that nothing happens in Istanbul city centre this weekend which might spoil the long-term party.
Taksim Square, the financial heart of the city and the scene of those horrific Leeds/Galatasaray events three years ago, has been the focus of a highly visible security operation over the past five days.
Police cars constantly cruise the busy shopping streets around the square, while on its periphery, three or more minibuses crammed with police are on 24-hour duty - ready, presumably, to respond to potential trouble at a moment's notice.
If there are hordes of English troublemakers at large in this city of dreaming spires, however, they've been keeping a remarkably low profile. Pictures of two shamefaced hooligans being deported back to Manchester from Istanbul airport - where special passport desks have been set up for British citizens - have been prominently displayed in the media. Which is perhaps why the Cockney-accented guy who was haggling over a woolly hat in the city's famous covered bazaar yesterday attracted a gaggle of interested - and, from his point of view, dismayingly beefy - locals. Could this be a geezer posing as a plonker? But when he rejected the snazzy black-and-white Besiktas hat in favour of a bright green Celtic number at less than half the price, the crowd melted away as if by magic. A plonker after all. Ah, well.