Abstract
Football is the most popular sport in Turkey through its success, its excesses, its prestigious victories. Imported by European foreigners at the end of the nineteenth century, practiced secretly by Muslim elites, it became in a few decades the symbol of the nation fighting against the external enemies, against a threatening Europe. Turkish football is also known for the passion of its supporters for the national team or club teams. The matches between the “Big Threes”, (Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş) are considered among the most spectacular derbies in the world that sometimes trigger violent clashes between fans. The place of football in Turkey is such that it constitutes an area particularly invested by politicians and thus reflects the major debates of Turkish society and the persistence of a strong nationalism.
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Irak, D., Polo, JF. (2018). Turkey. In: De Waele, JM., Gibril, S., Gloriozova, E., Spaaij, R. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Football and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78777-0_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78777-0_33
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