‘We’ Weren't There But ‘We’ Were More

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Those were the days when Ali Sami Yen Stadium (former stadium of Galatasaray) wasn't yet demolished. I was a regular of Yeni Açık (the New Bleachers). Due to ticket prices, I was preferring the lower stand at the Champions League games and the upper stand in the league games.

We took our places with my friend whom I often go to the games with. First there was the "atkı" (scarf) show, then the chant "Alemin Kralı Geliyor" (king of the universe is coming), then the Turkish national anthem, and the "üçlü" (trio) cheer...

The game started neck to neck. A fiery game. The opponent is Fenerbahçe. After a while, everyone started swearing at Fenerbahçe. Hands on shoulders, vocal cords pushing their limits, shouting our heads off, I feel the ground shaking in the bleachers.

The entire bleachers is shouting all the vulgar chants one by one. First, "I am child of Cimbombom [Galatasaray], what am I gonna do with the Kanarya [Fenerbahçe]! N.K.F.V.A.S.", then "Nınınınınıııı Fenerbahçe... Nınınınınıııı Fenerbahçe...". Each one is about f***ing the mothers of the other team's fans and/or players.

Those were the times when I questioned why it is that when watching a soccer game, we start swearing at the mother of the opponent for no reason at all. I also sang all those chants and cheers with great enthusiasm, with the pleasure and great happiness of shouting the same thing at the same time together with a group.

In fact, the first part of the cheer was good: "I am child of Cimbombom [Galatasaray], what am I gonna do with the Kanarya [Fenerbahçe]..." But while cheering the rest, my voice began to stick in my throat. When watching a derby game with my mother at home, I was finding it strange hearing these sounds fill the living room. I wasn't able to bring myself to say it at the game anymore either.

I didn't want to be a part of this group that was doing the thing I was criticizing, and also I was thinking to myself "another way of cheering is possible!".

I was trying to watch the game avoiding that bad cheer and pretending to mumble along when I jolted with a punch on my shoulder, it was the amigo responsible for making everyone cheer, he was standing on the rails in front of us with his back to the field: "Shout out like a man! What kind of fan are you!"

I simply said "CİMBOMBOM". I didn't want to chant it, plus I was being accused of "not being a man". I was bullied in the bleachers for not swearing at somebody's mother. It was then that I realized one cannot exist in the bleachers without swearing.

At half-time, I wrote different words for that cheer about swearing at mothers and started grumbling to my friend: "Mate, we all get angry even when we make good-humored, non-vulgar jokes about our mothers' names or clothes and whatnot. So why do we try to irritate our rivals by making our mothers, whom we evidently value a great deal, the subject of a much more offensive sentence or act? Isn't it obvious that we both would be pissed off if it was done to us? Dude, I feel ashamed of saying those cheers about f***ing the mothers of Fenerbahçe fans. My mother is a Fenerbahçe fan, so it's my grandmother who gets burned. Why? They are not even an element of the game. Can't we say something else, something to do with the incompetence of the players for example? Like, 'I'll break your leg, Fenerbahçeeee..."

The response was clear: "Don't be ridiculous mate. Your mother and grandmother don't count... And what sort of a cheer is that! While you're at it you might as well chant 'I'll bite your arm' or something, geez..."

It didn't make sense even to my friend with whom we often watched the games together and we couldn't continue a discussion about it. Well, we had just turned 18, finally done with the university entrance exams, these were over our head...

Still, how could I affect a change on the bleachers in general, when it was not possible to discuss it even with him?

Much later and with much curiosity I watched a game in which the bleachers were filled with thousands of women because the teams were punished for crowd trouble and no male fans were allowed in the stadium. Even though this penalty was nonsense, I was hoping that things would take a different turn now that the women were in the bleachers.

Nothing had changed. Thousands of women had started to shout the same profanities in unison. The result was horrible. It was not the women's fault because they were doing what the men they replaced had been doing all along.

The women had not been able to avoid the cheers filled with words that project the sexual violence in which the culture of male fans in the bleachers is imprisoned, a culture that does not allow anyone to imagine another possibility in that environment. "We" weren't there but "we" were more in there at that moment!

We, the ones with more testosterone, draw a direct correlation between the serotonin released in the body after winning a football game and the serotonin released in the body when shouting out that we will have a sexual relationship with the loved ones of our rivals.

That is why, we concur that the words which best describe the pleasure felt when a goal is scored belong to Sócrates: "No, no! That was not a goal! That was an unending orgasm! Unforgettable." In the book Doctor Socrates written by Andrew Downie, that is how Sócrates, the legendary footballer of Brazil National Team, described his goal, which brought the score to 1-1 against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) National Team in the 1982 World Cup.

We are born, raised and become adults with a suppressed masculinity, whatever that masculinity is. Even though I cannot yet understand why it is suppressed and what exactly is suppressed, the expression of whatever that is suppressed spreads across the universe in the form of verbal violence against the opposite sex even though they are not even in the vicinity.

When I say suppressed masculinity, do not think that it is something peculiar to the football stadiums or culture of Turkey.

On December 31, 2015, Cologne experienced one of the darkest new year's eves in its history. 497 women became victim of a mass sexual assault at the Main Railway Station. In an attempt to tease their opponent, the supporters of Hertha Berlin opened a placard on October 25, 2017, which read, "Your sisters dance alone even on New Year's Eve".

This masculinity is so savage that it can turn a situation, which was a social trauma for not only Cologne but the entire Germany, into an object of "ridicule".

On June 6, 2015, when the Champions League final match was played between Juventus and Barcelona, I was in Santiago, Chile. I was staying with four male friends of mine who lived in the same house. The game was at 3:45 pm local time in Chile. Apart from us being five men in the house, the goalkeeper of Barcelona was Claudio Bravo from Chile and Arturo Vidal was one of the midfielders of Juventus.

As for the referees of the match, they were from Turkey. The center referee was Cüneyt Çakır, his assistant referees were Bahattin Duran and Tarık Ongun; the line referees were Hüseyin Göçek and Barış Şimsek and the additional assistant reserve referee was Mustafa Emre Eyisoy.

Before the game started, my housemate called out to me and said, "The referee is from Turkey, I will swear in Turkish when I get angry. What do you usually say to the referees?" Here was the long-sought meeting and sharing between cultures.

After all, I had grown up with the film where Şevket Altuğ teaches his English teacher how to say "Fuck Pimp Osman" in Turkish. I had to give the film its due!

But if I had said everything that came to my mind, the few girl friends watching the game with us would have left the house. I said, "Do not make me say sexist things", but he wouldn't have it, so at last, I said, "OK, you say it at home, but do not ever say it to somebody from Turkey, they say 'Fagot Referee' the most...". It was one of those moments when I reproduced sexual violence, I felt slightly ashamed and embarrassed. The first syllable of the swear word was difficult for Chileans to pronounce. He wanted me to teach him something else. I taught him how to say "Fuck off" in Turkish. He found it easy to say. Throughout the entire game, he said it whenever the referee Cüneyt Çakır blew his whistle and sometimes just for the sake of saying it.

It was one of those moments when I truly felt bad. I especially did not like being the reproducer of the very thing that I had hoped could change.

Now, most probably, my friend remembers neither this memory, nor these words. It does not even have a value. What outweighed even more was the desperation that I felt in the face of my own subculture which did not and could not offer me something else.

P.S.: I apologize to the most esteemed referees Cüneyt Çakır, Bahattin Duran, Tarık Ongun, Hüseyin Göçek, Barış Şimşek and Mustafa Emre Eyisoy. (VA/APA/SD/TK/IG)

* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses

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