PSG-Basaksehir: Erdogan’s (very calculated) tackle

The racist incident that plagued the Champions League on Tuesday quickly took a political turn. At 10:25 p.m., with the PSG-Basaksehir match on hold for over an hour, after fourth referee Sebastian Coltescu called Turkish coach Pierre Achille Webo’s assistant “black” ( “Negru” in Romanian), causing the fury of the former Cameroonian footballer and the return of Turkish and Parisian players to the locker room, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is manifested.

“Our representative strongly condemns the racist remarks made against Pierre Webo, of the technical team of Basaksehir, and I believe that the necessary measures will be taken by UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations ) ”, Writes the Turkish president on his official Twitter account. “We are unconditionally against racism and discrimination in sport and in all areas of life,” adds the “Raïs”, imitated by other members of the government.

The “FC Erdogan”

Refusing to return to the pitch until the fourth referee is completely removed from the game, Istanbul players Basaksehir FK will not resume the match in the end, causing the match to be postponed until Wednesday. History does not say whether the intervention of the Turkish president played a role in this decision. However, the speech of such a high-ranking personality for a match between no national team owes nothing to chance. First of all, because of his links with the Istanbul team. Playing football from a young age in the Kasimpasa district, on the European side of Istanbul, the one nicknamed at the time “Imam Beckenbauer” (he divided his time between sport and the mosque, Editor’s note) even played for a time as a semi-professional footballer, in Kasimpasa SK, before entering politics at the age of 20. The stadium of this Turkish first division club bears the name of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The president’s ties to the Basaksehir team are even closer. Nicknamed the “FC Erdogan”, this Istanbul team, created by the Istanbul city hall in 1990 under the name Istanbul Büyüksehir Belediyespor, was bought out during its rise to the elite in 2014 by members of the AKP , the Justice and Development Party, to which Recep Tayyip Erdogan belongs. “This club was created from scratch by the AKP and Erdogan, because the Turkish president, previously a supporter of the Fenerbahçe club, wanted to have his own team”, explains to Point Selim Kuneralp, former Turkish diplomat in Brussels. “This decision is also explained by the fact that tAll the other clubs were run by an elite who did not belong to his political party. ”

The footballer president

The links between the Islamo-conservative party and the FK Istanbul Basaksehir are numerous. As recalled France TV Sport, its president, Göksel Gümüsdag, is the husband of one of the head of state’s nieces. Its main sponsor, the private hospital group Medipol, is headed by the personal doctor of the “Raïs”. Finally, the team wears an orange jersey, the color of the AKP. On July 26, 2014, the Turkish president took on the club’s uniform and took part in a meeting for the inauguration of the new stadium, located in the Istanbul district of Basaksehir, from which he took the name. On this occasion, Recep Tayyip Erdogan scored a hat-trick, it is true, without fierce opposition from his opponents. From then on, the new Istanbul club will experience a spectacular rise. In 2017, FK Istanbul Basaksehir acceded to the Europa League. In 2020, he is crowned champion of Turkey for the first time in his history, and joins the prestigious Champions League. But, this year, the sporting results are not there. At the end of the penultimate day of the first round, the Istanbul club has only one victory and one draw: it is already eliminated from the competition.

Besides the problem of racism in European football, it is on the political level that we must also read the statements of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is currently engaged in an open crisis with the European Union. Its repeated interventions in Cypriot and Greek territorial waters, as well as its increased role in the war in Libya and in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, bristle European chanceries, first and foremost France. “The news in Nagorno-Karabakh and in the Mediterranean is not a good sign and the question of the behavior and the risks posed by Turkey is raised collectively among the European partners”, recently confided a senior French diplomat. The issue of sanctions against Ankara will be raised at the European Council which is being held Thursday and Friday in Brussels. “It’s an option. However, the objective is not to sanction in order to sanction, but rather to stabilize the relationship between the European Union and Turkey within a clear framework ”, adds the diplomat.

A “boon” for Erdogan

In this extremely tense political context, the incidents surrounding the PSG-Basaksehir meeting give the Turkish president the opportunity to criticize Europe on the issue of racism. “It’s a great success in terms of public relations, because it gives the impression that a Turkish team, which is more that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, supports a person victim of racism against Europeans”, analyzes the former diplomat Selim Kuneralp. “It’s a boon for the Turkish president, especially since all the country’s press is only talking about it today. ”

Problem, the Turkish “Rais”, who takes the opportunity to present himself as a slayer of “discrimination in sport and in all areas of life”, has been engaged since 2015 in an open war against the Kurdish minority in Turkey , whether it is his political party, the HDP (People’s Democratic Party), or his armed guerrilla (PKK, Kurdistan Workers’ Party), considered terrorist by Turkey and the EU. The Turkish army has been sent to the south-east of the country to quell any opposition. And the HDP’s historic breakthrough in the legislative elections of June 2015, which caused the AKP to lose its absolute majority in parliament, resulted in its leader, Selahattin Demirtas, being sent to prison the following year. Since then, dozens of elected officials from the Kurdish party have been ousted from their town hall in the south-east of the country.

Repression of the Kurds

“The Kurds are not considered by the Turkish government as an ethnic minority, but as full citizens,” replied Selim Kuneralp. “It is not a question here of racial discrimination but of the political role that the Kurds want to play”, he assures us. And the former ambassador added, not without ulterior motives: “This is a separatism which is not recognized by the majority of the Turkish population. ”