There are probably a few thousand who came to the shore of the Sea of Marmara in Istanbul’s Kalamis district that evening. Some are crouching in the grass, most are sitting on camping chairs they have brought with them. Everyone is staring spellbound at one of the screens showing the final of the European Women’s Volleyball Championships. The Turkish national team plays in Belgium against the team from Serbia for the European Cup. Volleyball has never been a sport for a mass audience in Turkey. Only now, with the European Championship, has that changed.
Homosexual player becomes a target of strictly Islamic groups
“There are so many failures in our country that this is a really big thing for us and for our women right now. It makes us happy and hopeful for the future,” says Orkun, a young man from Istanbul on a camping chair . The sporting success of the Turkish women is not the only reason why the country is in volleyball fever.
There is a player in the national team who shared a picture of herself and her girlfriend on her Instagram profile two years ago and came out as a lesbian: Ebrar Karakurt. Since then she has repeatedly been the target of strict Islamic groups. The tenor: Such a revealing and self-confident woman is a terrible role model for Turkish girls and a shame for the nation. Orkun is furious: “There are groups that agree with these people who don’t have a high IQ and who constantly try to use a situation that can be linked to Islam as a form of protest.”
Expert: Erdogan benefits from such debates
The Islamic-conservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated the volleyball players by phone after the European Championship victory. He had so far stayed out of the dispute over the athlete Ebrar Karakurt, but Turkey connoisseurs such as Soner Cagpatay from the Washington Institute think tank should benefit the most from the polarization surrounding her. “It’s likely that he’s tempted by his allies’ demands for archaic social policies and that he believes it’s beneficial to start new culture wars like this. He thrives on culture wars, he wins them,” says Cagpatay.
And these are now also spreading to sport: many young people came to the Istanbul district of Kalamis primarily to protest against the attacks by strictly Islamic groups. One of them is Türku. “I’m not usually very interested in sport. But this is a country that’s very repressed, where there’s a lot of bans and incredible things are happening to protest against. It’s just a really nice way to be here today to do something,” she says.
Türku hopes the women’s volleyball victory will be a lesson to all Islamic groups in the country. For them and many others, the EM final is an opportunity to protest without fear of getting into trouble.